Malawian President Bakili Muluzi said on Thursday endemic corruption has ”slowed down” economic growth in the poor Southern African nation and repeated a warning that offenders will be punished.
Muluzi, speaking at the inauguration of the anti-corruption day that will now be commemorated annually by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), did not elaborate on how much the economy has sufferred due to graft.
The president also failed to specify how he intends to deal with long-pending corruption cases before he retires in May this year after serving two five-year terms.
”Corruption is evil: it’s the cancer of democracy and undermines public confidence. Everybody who is caught, will have no protection from me,” he said, repeating his favourite line on the issue.
He said the country ”should develop a national culture where corruption is not tolerated. Let’s resist, reject and report corruption.”
The state-funded ACB was established a year after the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, which Muluzi won after three decades of dictatorial rule under Kamuzu Banda.
But the World Bank, one of the main sponsors of the country’s tough economic reforms, last year said high-level graft had worsened in the past five years and ”significantly slowed down economic growth”.
The bank said in a report titled Malawi Country Economic Forum that high-level corruption and lack of political will to combat the scourge were two reasons for the country’s economic slowdown.
The institution says it wants the agriculture-powered economy to grow by an average of 6% per year to create wealth and reduce grinding poverty that affects 65% of Malawi’s 11-million people.
The economy has grown by only 2% in the past few decades. — Sapa-AFP