If voted into power, NARC’S Government will formulate a programme for the reform, stabilization and development of the economy which will incorporate the strategies and policies stated in this manifesto. NARC’S Government believes that the effectiveness of its programme will among other things; depend on the procedures for and organization of planning; and commitment and dedication of politicians and civil servants. The quality of the database will be important as weII. So too the relevance of the programme to the needs and response of the people. For these reasons, it will be necessary for NARC’S Government to:

1. Review the organization and procedures for planning, plan co-ordination and implementation with a view to improving their effectiveness.

2. Improve the quality, comprehensiveness and timeliness of economic and social indicators and other data by strengthening the quality and quantity staff of the National Statistical Office and other data collection institutions.

3. Increase the relevance and acceptability of development programmes and projects by extending participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation, wherever feasible; by encouraging the formation of associations among smallholder farmers, tenants and workers through which to sound their group interests and where necessary negotiate with other parties; and by engaging in active dialogue with these and other interest groups, such as the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry, women's associations and the Road Transport Operators Association (RTOA) etc.

4. Co-operate with all church-based and other NGOs involved in development work.

Environment and Spatial Distribution of Development

Environment and Spatial Distribution of Development

1. Environment

The nation’s greatest asset is the environment in which we live. NARC’S Government believes that all Malawians, at present and in the future, have the right to a safe and healthy environment. Accordingly the NARC’S Government policy on socio-economic development will be based on of fulfilling that right. An integrated approach to environmental issues that relates to all sectors of society is essential for our long term development. In addition our full realisation of the integrated nature of the global environment and the need for international cooperation is a matter of utmost importance. It is NARC’S Government's policy to develop a framework designed to create satisfactory conditions which are environmentally sound, for growth and development. Therefore in pursuance of these broad principles, NARC’S Government will:

1. Develop appropriate environmental awareness programmes for the whole community to participate in the planning, development and management of resources.
2. Work for the rigorous conservation of our natural resources by legislative, administrative and other measures that meet internationally acceptable standards.
3. Encourage formation of independent bodies to campaign and influence government policy on the environment.
4. Work to preserve genetic resources and bio-diversity, microbes, plants, and animals.
5. Promote continuous monitoring of key national reserves, rivers and water bodies in order to detect any changes in levels of pollution and their impact on the environment.

6. Promote reforestation programmes to arrest desertification and land degradation.
7. Identify endangered species and protect them by laws.
8. Regulate the export of unique and live indigenous species, plants
Fish, butterflies, beetles, and microbes in order to protect our national heritage.
9. Promote and support research in civil-culture, including species most promising for agro-forestry, watershed management and pest and disease control.
10. Introduce environmental impact reporting for the benefit of the public and specialized bodies dealing with environment issues.

11. Promote monitoring, through legislation, of all investment projects concerning environmental issues, with a view to environmental protection and conservation.

2. Spatial Distribution of Development

NARC’S Government's policy on spatial distribution of development will include:

1. Decentralizing planning activities to encourage public participation in development planning, using appropriate legislation and institutional support.

2. Encouraging integrated zonal development strategy (i.e. integration of the agricultural, industrial and the services sectors).

3. Promoting orderly development of towns by introducing effective development control systems free from excessive political influence in order to encourage national growth.

THE ECONOMY

1. Economic Principles

NARC’S Government believes that:

a. The economy must on producing, hint also on industrialization manufacturing of goods and services that are desired by society and in quantities that satisfy the needs of domestic and export markets.

b. The market or price system must be the basis for making economic decisions. The economy should not be driven by politics, nepotism, ethnicity and regionalism as mechanism for allocating scarce resources.

c. The economy must promote fair distribution of national income and wealth.

d. The economy must promote efficient industrialization/manufacturing and distribution of national output and wealth.

e. There must be full utilisation of the capital, human and other natural resources of the country.
f. The purchasing power of money and savings must be maintained.

g. The capacity of the economy to produce goods and services must increase over time.

h. The role of local traders popularly known as vendors is significant and important in the light that unemployment is very high. And there continued existence is quite important and only that there is limited infrastructure for the number of the vendors that are available.

A stable and competitive economy is necessary for the pursuit of the above principles. The economy must reduce the budget deficit to the bare minimum, reduce inflation and achieve a surplus in the balance of payments. To foster competition, the Party will encourage firms to enter sectors that are currently dominated by statutory and private monopolies, and reduce government controls and regulations. The Party will encourage and respect private enterprise.

NARC’S Government believes that a balanced, diversified, dynamic and self-reliant economy is central to the full realisation of the aspirations of the Malawian people. In order to meet these aspirations NARC’S Government will pursue integrated, comprehensive and sustainable growth development strategies in all sectors of the economy. Emphasis will be on macro-economic balance, price stability and balance of payment equilibrium. Policy consistency and predictability, accountability and transparency will be the basis of the NARC’S Government economic strategy. It is NARC’S Government's belief that a democratic government should manage the economy in full consultation with business interests, and all sectors of society including the labour movement. The society must be fully involved in formulating the development path of the economy. It is only then that the national economy will ably respond to the real needs of society. Developing a prosperous and more equitable economy is essential to the long term sustainability of a democratic political system which has respect for Human Rights as its moral foundation.

NARC’S Government believes that a democratic government has a responsibility to positively respond to the needs of society in the social sectors of education, health, housing, sanitation and water. The provision of infrastructure in the form of roads, telecommunication, electricity, and water is essential in the creation of an enabling environment for the of the economy.
A diversified, dynamic and strong private sector is the engine of national development. In the non-agricultural sectors, priority will be accorded to the development of manufacturing industries, including small and medium-scale enterprises, mining, and tourism. In the agriculture sector will be put on the diversification and commercialization of food and cash crops and livestock to meet national requirements and for export.

Great effort will be made to fully mobilize, utilize and manage the manpower potential of the country. A more creative approach will be adopted for the efficient exploitation and utilization of natural resources, capital, and technical know-how.

2. Economic Development

1. Improvement in the Standard of Living

Until the late 1980s, poverty reduction and equality in income distribution were not development policy objectives. Increasing employment was pursued as an objective of development policy, but the number of people employed as a proportion of the labour force has not increased. Real per capita income has also declined since 1979. The most affected groups are smallholder farmers, tenants on commercial farms, and workers in towns and cities.

NARC’S Government is committed to a general improvement in the standard of living of the people. The Party will pursue this as its development goal and adopt appropriate policy measures to attain it. This goal will entail raising the level of consumption, increasing education opportunities and health status, and improving self-esteem and freedom of choice. This will require a reduction in poverty, an increase in employment, a reduction in inequality in the distribution of personal income, an increase in real per capita disposable income and an increase in real per capita government consumption expenditure.

2. Raising Real Disposable Income and Real Government Consumption Expenditure

NARC’S Government will pursue increasing real per capita disposable income and real per capita government recurrent expenditure, especially those components that influence the standard of living of the poor such as expenditure on education, health, nutrition, community and social services as a priority objective.

3. Poverty Alleviation

As a matter of priority, NARC’S Government will take steps to:

1. Implement policies aimed at expanding employment in the formal and informal sectors of the economy in urban and rural areas.

2. Implement policies to prevent wage and salaries from falling in real terms.

3. Improve the income-generating capacity of rural households by raising agriculture productivity, diversifying production in non-farm enterprises and paying competitive prices.

4. Improve access, for rural households to land, credit facilities both in the agriculture and non-farm activities, and greater liberalization of markets.

5. Promote and support voluntary programmes designed to slow down the rate of growth of population.

6. Employment Generation

As it has already been stated above, the employment ratio (the ratio of formal sector employment to total labour force) has declined since the late 1970s. The economic and financial problems of the 1980s gave rise to growing open unemployment and under employment. These problems have been made worse by structural unemployment among school and college leavers who are endowed with inappropriate skills and by the seasonal nature of rain fed agriculture which gives rise to seasonal unemployment. Inadequate capital formation and foreign exchange inflows are also to blame.
The indicators are that, unless something is done about it, unemployment throughout 1990s will be high as the labour force is expected to continue glowing rapidly. At current growth rates, the population is expected to reach 10.2 million in 1996 and 12.0 million by the year 2000, from a base of 7.8 million in 1987. The labour force is projected to rise from 3.7 million in 1987 to 5.0 million in 1996 or by an average of 145,000 persons per year.

The public sector employment is not expected to increase by much more than 2000 per year; private sector employment might increase by between 15,000 and 35,000 per year, while non-agricultural informal sector employment could rise by between 7,000 and 15,000 a year. This will leave between 95,000 and 120,000 labour force entrants who it is expected to be absorbed by small holder agriculture. Yet small holder agriculture itself is facing an acute problem as the land-man ratio continues to decline progressively.

NARC’S Government is very much aware of the seriousness of the unemployment and underemployment problems and the likely economic, social, and political consequences. Therefore the measures and policies that NARC’S Government will adopt to stabilise the economy and stimulate development will also help in creating employment. In addition, NARC’S Government will:

1. Adopt measures to compensate shortfalls in export earnings, to ensure stable and expanding export markets and to stabilise foreign capital inflows.

2. Promote economic growth through its liberal policy of licensing new enterprises and via accumulation of capital -the co-operating factor of production.
3. Address unemployment among school and college leavers by encouraging the design of suitable curriculum and by expanding and improving technical and vocational training.

4. Adopt measures to make rural urban migration less attractive by preventing the urban - rural earnings gap from widening and by improving social and welfare services and amenities in rural areas. Adopt in cognizance the right of vendors as the indigenous traders who stimulate local entrepreneurship and enhance ownership of the local economy.

5. Address seasonal unemployment by adopting measures that can assist to even out labour requirements during the year, for instance by irrigation, to reduce dependence on seasonal rainfall; and by encouraging the establishment of non-farm economic activities during the slack period.

5. Fiscal Policy for Development
Despite various tax measures in the past, tax revenue as a proportion of GDP has declined. What fiscal measures have also failed to achieve is an improvement in expenditure planning, and a reduction in losses and misuse of public funds and other resources, some of which are explained in the Auditor-General's and the Public Accounts Committee Reports. Nor have they been able to achieve a sustained reduction in the budget deficit by minimising the allocation of resources to non-productive projects in the public sector. Fiscal measures have failed to address corruption and rent-seeking behaviour. These phenomena are significant elements of the economic crisis. They are as much effects as they are factors. They take the form of theft, bribery, nepotism, tribalism and regionalism in the allocation of public resources.

1. Tax Policy

New Labor Party will use tax policy to promote economic growth and development, to enhance equity and economic stability. To achieve this NARC’S Government will:

I. Broaden the tax base, and improve tax administration and ensure accountability in revenue collection.

II. Consult with the private sector on issues relating to corporate tax, import duties, and surtax.

III. Minimize the disruptive effects of taxation on supply and allocation of resources.

2. Expenditure Policy

As regards expenditure in the public, including the parastatals sector, NARC’S GOVERNMENT will:

I. Promote efficiency and equity in the provision of public goods and services.
II. Eliminate nepotism, ethnicity and regionalism as criteria for resources allocation. Merit shall become the main criteria for awarding public sector contracts.

III. Reduce waste, theft and corruption in the public sector by holding officers who commit these offences responsible for their actions, and by adhering to guidelines for purchase of public stores. An anti-corruption law will be enacted to deal with cases of bribery and theft.

IV. Review the relevance to national development of all activities in the public sector; and privatise those that can be handled by the private sector.

V. Reallocate resources, especially to the priority areas which have a direct bearing on reduction of poverty such as, smallholder agricultural development, education, health, nutrition programmes, and housing.
VI. Manpower Policies

VII. Almost thirty years after independence, Malawi's manpower problem remains unresolved. There is a clear discrepancy between the type of manpower produced by our education system and the needs of the economy. The training policy pursued by the MCP has placed a heavy emphasis on administrative personnel as opposed to technical manpower. The commensurate incentive scheme has also followed the same bias.

VIII. The MCP has totally failed to retain the nation's own highly trained scientific and personnel. As a result we still remain overly dependent on expatriate manpower. The expenditure on this expertise is high. The disparities, in terms of remuneration, between the local personnel and expatriates of equivalent qualifications are heavily weighed in favour of expatriates.

The NARC’S Government shall seek to break this tradition both in the public and the s. In this context, NARC’S Government will:

1. Establish an integrated system of education and training to ensure that skills acquired are nationally recognised and contribute to career development.

2. Focus on training on technical and applied sciences, with emphasis on its application to the local social and economic environment. Twinning arrangements between Malawi Technical institutions with those in industrialised countries but also those in Asia such as India, and Korea amongst others will be encouraged.

3. Minimise the Brain Drain of Malawian scientists, intellectuals and professionals by creating a more stable and supportive environment.

4. Review the employment conditions and terms of remuneration for local staff to ensure that the principle of equal pay for equal work applies to both locally recruited and expatriate personnel.

7. Promotion of Private Business Activities

The development of the private business sector is directly related to opportunities by rising domestic and foreign demand for goods and services. The provision of public utilities and other infrastructure also facilitates this development.

In the last thirty-two years a number critical policy measures and structural problems have impeded prosperity and development. These include periodic shortage of foreign exchange, bureaucratic delays in attending to business firms, forced seizure of private enterprise, administrative barriers to entry into industry, inadequate credit to small-scale and medium-scale enterprises, demarcation of industries or location by race or other discriminatory criteria and more recently, industrial unrest. In other words, the investment climate is not conducive. To improve the investment climate, NARC’S Government will take measures to:

1. Avoid actions or policies that would lead to a shortage of foreign exchange.

2. Improve the efficiency of those ministries that handle the affairs of business enterprise.

3. Return business and personal properties which were seized under the Forfeiture Act without any or adequate compensation to rightful owners.

4. Amend all laws which create statutory monopolies and pass appropriate legislation for dealing with monopolistic and destructive economic practices.

5. Develop adequate credit facilities for small-scale and medium-scale enterprises.

6. Amend the Immigration Act to allow investors, irrespective of colour or origin, to undertake business of their choice, anywhere in the country.