Ministry of Trade and Industry says it continues to negotiate for favourable market access for the country’s products on the global market despite continued dwindling exports.

The ministry’s spokesperson Mayeso Msokera said this in an interview on the back of World Bank data showing a decline in the growth of the country’s exports over the years.

Most of the country’s tobacco is exported semi-processed

The data shows that the country’s exports have declined from a peak of 66 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013 to 35 of GDP in 2021.

Msokera said some of the products with huge export potential include soya beans, chillies, sugar, legumes, edible fruit and nuts.

He said: “Of all the export products, soya is proving to have strong potential to reach the scale of tobacco in terms of net exports in the next few years as it faces the strongest potential demand on the global market.

“The potential for value- addition is also high as the country currently has at least industrial-scale processing capacity of 700 000 metric tonnes of soya beans out of which Malawi can produce a lot of downstream products such as cooking oil, corn-soya blend, soya chunks [textured soya protein], chicken feed and soya milk, among other things.”

Msokera said negotiations are currently at an advance stage with the governments of China and Tanzania to facilitate off-taking of soya beans and chillies from Malawi.

“We are also witnessing an increase in exports of pigeon peas to United Arab Emirates and India. For instance, about 69 151 metric tonnes was exported in 2022 following a memorandum of understanding that Malawi signed with India for the export of pigeon peas,” he said.

The importance of trade as a share of GDP has been declining from 66 percent in 2013 to 35 percent in 2020, a situation which the global affairs think-tank Oversees Development Institute said is due to the undiversified export basket, with more than half made up of tobacco.

Speaking in an interview on Friday, National Working Group on Trade Policy chairperson Frederick Changaya said market availability remains key to sustainable production and better prices.

He, however, said Malawi needs to expand its export base to realise its export potential.

Treasury data shows that the value of exports decreased by 4.5 percent from $1.01 billion in 2021 to $956.9 million in 2022, mainly due to low productivity within the agricultural sector.

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