President Joyce Banda urges positive partnership with the private sector

President Dr. Joyce Banda has said a positive partnership between government and the private business sector in the country would bring in a good impact to the development of the economy.
The president made the remarks during an interactive dinner with southern region based private sector companies on Friday, 21st March, 2014 at Sanjika Palace in Blantyre.
“Time has come when government and private sector should come together for economy growth of the country. Recently, we have heard of reports indicating that Malawi is on position 73 out of the 163 African countries that are speeding up the growth of their economy and today our economy, the crop in the fields, foreign exchange are looking good whilst inflation and interest rates are going down,” said Dr Banda.

Her Excellence Dr. Joyce Banda sharing out her government achievements in 2 years and plans for the next five years.

She added that her government led by Peoples Party is the only one which has put 2014 to 2019 as years to create an appropriate growth of the private sector.
“In our manifesto, we have left legacy of the past and our focus is on how tomorrow should be developed,” she said.
Minister of Finance, Dr Maxwell Mkwezalamba said government has managed for the first half of the budget period from 2013-2014 to perform within the resources that have been available.
“We have been able to implement the budget and this has restored micro-economic stability and we did not seek recourse to domestic borrowing and this shows government’s commitment to make sure there is fiscal prudence looking at what we have,” he said.
He said there is need as a country not to wholly focus on donor funds and that is to say if donors bring in their help that should be a bonus.
“We need to develop strategies together so as to enhance the development as well as sustaining our economy. We need to improve the quality of the public expenditure as well as maintaining the forex position that is very health at the time,” he concluded.
Minister of Industry and Trade, Sosten Gwengwe, said there is much that his ministry is putting in place so that the private sector feels at home and for the growth of the country’s economy.
Among other things, Gwengwe said that the reforms that as government put in place will not be left just as the way they are but that will be followed and enacted. There are reforms on business registration systems in Malawi, online business reforms that are expected to complete by April 2014, the Business Centre also will complete by end March, 2014.
“Business licensing regulators are working with the Ministry of Justice and are expected to complete by April 2014. We are also working with the Tanzanian government in setting up a one stop shopping centre in places of Kasumulu and Songwe and this will see offices of the Immigration department, Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA), Agriculture, Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBTS) in the border post.
Government will work very closely with the private sector in order to find win to win solutions and though there have been challenges on the business resident with the private sector, the Immigration Department and Ministry of Justice have looked at the issue in order to reform,” concluded Gwengwe.
In his remarks, Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Ralph Jooma said upon government taking over in 2012 they have managed to remove the hard tax the private sector paid and currently the better fruits have started to show off when it can clearly be identified that both government and the private sector have brought back the economy of the country.
“The meeting is expected to be rewarding both to the private sector as well as government on the improvement of the economy. This is not the first time government is meeting the private sector, as we have met them for some time now as one way of appreciating the role they are playing in developing the economy of the country,” he said.

Glacier National Park in Montana by Anjimile Banda

Glacier National Park is located in the U.S. state of Montana, south from the Canadian borders of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses over 1,000,000 acres (4,000 km²) and includes parts of two mountain ranges (sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains), over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the “Crown of the Continent Ecosystem”, a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 square miles (41,000 km²).

The region that became Glacier National Park was first inhabited by Native Americans and upon the arrival of European explorers, was dominated by the Blackfeet in the east and the Flathead in the western regions. Soon after the establishment of the park on May 11, 1910, a number of hotels and chalets were constructed by the Great Northern Railway. These historic hotels and chalets are listed as National Historic Landmarks, and a total of 350 locations are on the National Register of Historic Places. By 1932, work was completed on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, later designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, which provided greater accessibility for automobiles into the heart of the park.

Scotland Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Riddled with lochs and crested by moody Highlands, Scotland adds to its already considerable outdoorsy appeal this year. In April, the John Muir Way, named for the conservationist originally from Scotland, will expand to 134 miles from 45 miles, newly spanning the farmland and forests of the country’s midsection. Organizers estimate it will take eight to 12 days on foot or four to six by bike to complete the coast-to-coast route running from Muir’s boyhood hometown Dunbar west to the Loch Lomond area. The attractions extend beyond amateur workouts.

This summer, Glasgow will stage the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Olympic-style competitions for Britain and the former British colonies, and in September Gleneagles resort in the Highlands will host the Ryder Cup golf competition. Sports and hospitality will meet at Cromlix House Hotel, a 15-room resort that the tennis champion and local hero Andy Murray plans to open in April in a Victorian mansion in Dunblane.

Nashville in Tenn by Anjimile Banda

Country music lovers have long made the pilgrimage to Nashville, but now the city has fast gained cachet among rock fans and foodies. The city’s vibrant scene is home to the Black Keys, Kings of Leon, Jeff the Brotherhood and Diarrhea Planet, who all play in town occasionally. And a youthquake is transforming scruffy neighborhoods like 12South and East Nashville into hipster hubs.

New hangouts include Pinewood Social, a bar, restaurant, bowling alley and karaoke joint, and the 404, a restaurant and boutique hotel in a former auto garage. Add to that a thriving culinary scene, exemplified by the Music City Eats Festival, back for a second year in September. And Nashville’s old standbys — like the honky-tonk Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and the venerable Ryman — are as fun as ever.

Rotterdam in the Netherlands Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Post-World War II reconstruction has changed the face of one of Europe’s largest ports, where striking, cubed architecture gives shape to the most modern skyline in the country. But it’s not done yet. This is a banner year for ribbon cuttings to celebrate both new and reconfigured space: An overhaul of Rotterdam Centraal  train station (scheduled for completion in March) has already unveiled a new shop-lined pedestrian passageway and the city’s first Starbucks.

The renovated Kunsthal museum reopens in February. François Geurds, chef of the two-Michelin-starred restaurant FG, opens another restaurant this month. Come October, the massive arch of the Markthal, whose interior displays 3-D food photographs, becomes the country’s first indoor food hall. Need a launching pad? Check into a brand-new gem: the Rem Koolhaas-designed nhow hotel.

Perth in Australia Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Perth, the capital of western Australia, has long been feted for its beaches, laid-back vibe and Aboriginal heritage, but lately Australia’s fourth-largest city is exhibiting the signs of a trendy transformation. Regional wine lists? Check. Modish new restaurants in repurposed spaces like stables (the Stables Bar), cottages (the Old Crow) or a printing press building (the Print Hall)? Check. International celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver, whose Italian spot Jamie’s Italian recently opened? Up-and-coming neighborhoods like Mount Lawley and Northbridge, chockablock with cafes and vintage shops? Check and check. Transformation is evident on a larger scale, too:

The Riverside project is infusing the eastern side of the city with parks, shops and housing plazas, while expansion of the new Crown Perth complex includes hotels — Crown Metropol and Crown Promenade — and posh restaurants like Nobu and La Vie Champagne Lounge. And with first- and business-class lounges opening at Los Angeles International Airport this year, the national airline Qantas makes it easy to get Down Under in style.

Quang Binh in Vietnam Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Son Doong Cave in the Quang Binh province of central Vietnam is one of the world’s largest caves and is now, for the first time, accessible to tourists, thanks to the tour operator Oxalis.

Huge shafts of light penetrate its vast caverns, allowing forests of 100-foot-tall trees to thrive in spaces big enough to accommodate 40-story skyscrapers. Colossal 260-foot stalactites are also present. Monkeys, hornbills and flying foxes have all been spotted in this surreal habitat, first fully explored in 2009. While trips into Son Doong are limited in number (only 220 permits for the year) and to visitors with deep pockets (over $6,000 per trip), the nearby and more affordable Tu Lan Cave is also now open to adventurous travelers.

Ecuador Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Ecuador is famed as the home of the Galápagos, the beloved islands off the coast that feature mind-boggling wildlife — but the mainland is no slouch either. One of the most biodiverse countries in the world, Ecuador has over 1,600 species of birds, 4,000 kinds of orchids, one of the largest condor shelters on the planet — and one-fifth of the country (including the Galápagos) is protected.

And there is a new way to see a good chunk of it: the recently refurbished Tren Crucero. The luxury vintage train starts in Quito (the first city ever to be declared a World Heritage site by Unesco) and travels through the Andes, over snow-capped mountains, past volcanoes, around a harrowing turn called the Devil’s Nose and through the countryside until arriving in the bustling city of Guayaquil. The four-day trip includes an excursion to Cotopaxi National Park — a place where you might see deer, wolves, bears or one of those condors.

Namibia Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Namibia’s communal conservancy movement, which pairs sustainable tourism with rural community outreach, has been a much-heralded success: In 2013, the country’s 79 conservancies received the prestigious Gift to the Earth Award from the World Wildlife Fund, and the stunning Namib Sand Sea Desert joined Unesco’s World Heritage list.

Options abound for travelers who want to help the effort, including the Desert Rhino Camp, which Wilderness Safaris runs in partnership with the Save the Rhino Trust; the camp directly supports the conservancy, which has reversed dwindling rhino populations. In 2014, Wilderness Safaris also plans to open the Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp, on the Hoanib River in the north. And Namibia’s Tourism Board is introducing three self-drive routes in 2014 to point visitors toward less-visited parts of the country.

Downtown Los Angeles Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Gone is the musty, lifeless, only-open-for-Kings-hockey-games reputation of downtown Los Angeles. While the museums in this corner of the city are thriving (the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art is nearby), the growing dynamism of downtown is the food scene. Most notable is the Grand Central Market, an arcade of over 30 of the best food vendors in the city.

Originally built in 1917, the market has been redone in the past year, attracting popular purveyors like G&B Coffee and, soon, Belcampo Meat Co. Just down the street is Alma, which was named the best new restaurant in the country by Bon Appétit magazine. And where there is good food there is good shopping. Stores will be adding cachet to the neighborhood soon; an outlet of the fashion label Acne Studios opened in December, with Aesop, a skin-care specialist, soon to follow. Diners and shoppers alike will soon have a hip place to stay: An Ace Hotel is scheduled to open nearby this month.

Albanian Coast Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

What if you could combine the rugged beauty you’d find on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast with the ruins of an undiscovered Turkey or Greece, all wrapped in the easygoing nature characteristic of rural Italy — at a fraction of the cost? Turns out you can, on the coast of Albania.

The roughly Maryland-size country, between Greece and Montenegro, sits about 45 miles east of Italy on the eastern shores of the Adriatic and has limestone-ringed beaches, ancient ruins like Butrint and waterfront inns where you can stay for less than $50 a night. Rampant development threatened to turn it all to concrete in the years after Communism, but a new government took office in September on promises of keeping the coast authentic. Head to villages like Qeparo, within sight of Corfu, where you can kayak past Cold War submarine tunnels, swim by abandoned forts and watch the tide rise during a dinner of fresh fish at an inn called the Riviera. This is Europe when it was fresh and cheap.

North Coast in California Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

One hundred and thirty miles north of San Francisco, the moody bluffs of the Mendocino Coast have long been a spectacular place from which to observe marine life: passing humpback whales, sun-happy sea lions, foamy waves strewn with kelp. The incorporation of the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands — nearly 1,300 acres — gives hikers new access to a contiguous 12-mile stretch of coastline and fields of wildflowers, cypress forests and cliff areas (some overlooking dramatic blowholes, pinnacles and sea caves), much of it previously off-limits to the public.

And Congressional proposals to include the north coast lands as part of the California Coastal National Monument have been introduced, which would mean better protection and more funds for maintenance; plans also exist to extend the California Coastal Trail through the new preserve.

Christchurch in New Zealand Travel Place by Anjimile Banda

Three years after two large earthquakes devastated central Christchurch, the city is experiencing a rebirth with creativity and wit — thanks to the ingenuity of its hardy residents — and is welcoming tourists back again. Though much of the central city has yet to be rebuilt, entrepreneurs and volunteers are finding surprising ways to make temporary use of empty lots and bring life back to the downtown. The Gap Filler program, begun a couple of months after the first quake in September 2010 and expanded after a more destructive second quake in February 2011, has created an open-air performance space made of blue pallets, a dance floor with coin-operated music and lights, and even a nine-hole mini-golf course in vacant lots across the city.

The Greening the Rubble campaign has since the 2010 quake been planting temporary gardens on the sites of demolished buildings. To replace the badly damaged 19th-century ChristChurch Cathedral, a magnificent transitional church by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban opened in August with sturdy cardboard tubes for the roof. Businesses are also trickling back downtown. One bar, built inside shipping containers, has a name that encapsulates the spirit of the entire city: Revival.

Cape Town in South Africa travel place by Anjimile Banda

When Nelson Mandela was incarcerated at Robben Island prison, he found inspiration in Cape Town. “We often looked across Table Bay at the magnificent silhouette of Table Mountain,” he said in a speech. “To us on Robben Island, Table Mountain was a beacon of hope. It represented the mainland to which we knew we would one day return.”

Cape Town’s importance to Mandela, who made his first address there as a free man, will doubtless draw many visitors in the wake of his death. The country has transformed itself since Mandela’s imprisonment, but there’s still much to be done. Many in Cape Town have been grappling with that challenge, including its creative class, which has been examining whether inspired design can solve some of the issues stemming from years of inequality.

The city formally takes up that issue this year during its turn as World Design Capital. Cape Town is celebrating design in all its forms, putting on fashion shows by students and established designers alike, hosting architecture open houses, welcoming the public into artists’ studios and folding the annual visual arts spectacular Design Indaba conference in February into the design capital program. Also part of the lineup are locals seeking to rejuvenate impoverished black-majority townships: The Maboneng Lalela Project turns township homes into galleries and performance spaces; Foodpods constructs sustainable farms, giving residents access to healthy produce; and the Langa Quarter project seeks to make the precinct a cultural tourism destination.

Cape Town is again reinventing itself, and the world is invited to its renaissance.