By Sylvester Kumwenda
Lilongwe, July 2, Mana: Government has expressed satisfaction with the quality of products being produced locally under the Buy Malawi Strategy.
Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Christina Zakeyo, made the remarks Friday in Lilongwe during the Buy Malawi Independence Day Promotion organized to cerebrate and promote consumption of locally manufactured products.
“Going by what we have seen, there is really a big improvement in terms of the quality of products we are producing. There is a lot of value addition and product diversification, and most encouraging is that most of the raw materials for these products are coming from Malawi, which is very important for industrialization,” she said.
As such, Zakeyo said the Buy Malawi Strategy is fairing very well and is helping in, amongst others, the creation of jobs and reservation of forex.
She, therefore, urged Malawians to continue consumption of locally produced products saying Malawian producers are now capable of satisfying the need of the consumer taste, arguing that every product carrying the Buy Malawi logo has passed quality assurance standards.
She, however, urged local manufactures to also utilize the existing international trade opportunities.
“Malawi belongs to a number of regional economic groupings including some bilateral international trade agreements. Recently we have also concluded a number of Memorandum of Understandings with countries like India and South Sudan.
“Currently, a delegation from South Sudan is in the country to explore on products that can be exported to their country. What remains for us is to enhance our productive capacity and ensure we produce according to the necessary requirements and standards of those countries,” Zakeyo said.
In her remarks, Beatrice Makwenda, Vice Chairperson of the Buy Malawi Strategy Committee said there is now a lot of awareness of the strategy amongst producers and companies in the country which has resulted into more companies wishing to join.
She also said that there is more market space for local products following the discussions by the Ministry of Trade with some of the retailers in the country who have allocated space for local products.
However, some of the challenges remain on the consumer base in terms of preference between locally produced products versus imported ones, and on issues of consistency of supply.
“Sometimes we receive feedback from the customers that the products are not always available and in some cases on the need to improve on the quality of some products.
“That is why we are now focusing more on raising the consciousness on quality, presentation in terms of labelling and packaging, because these are what consumers would like to see more. So our focus is to improve more on quality,” Makwenda said.
The Buy Malawi Strategy, which was launched in 2016 with an aim of promoting consumption of locally produced goods, now has about 50 members.
