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In January/February 2025, an assessment was undertaken of the data quality of the public sector debt statistics (PSDS) of Malawi against the IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF) for PSDS. The mission was undertaken as part of a project to strengthen the quality of public sector debt in select African countries, funded by the Government of Japan. The mission reviewed the PSDS compilation and dissemination practices against each element of the DQAF and presented a series of recommendations to improve the quality and transparency of the PSDS of Malawi.
This report discusses the findings and recommendations of a diagnostic assessment of the quality of public sector debt statistics (PSDS) of Malawi based on the IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework for PSDS. The assessment was undertaken in February 2025 as part of a project to strengthen the quality of public sector debt data in select African countries, funded by the Government of Japan. Like many low-income countries, Malawi is facing challenges servicing its public debt. The latest joint IMF-World Bank debt sustainability analysis of January 2024 indicates that the country is in debt distress. The authorities have taken measures lately to strengthen governance and transparency of public debt. In 2022, Malawi enacted a new Public Finance Management Act providing a legal framework for government borrowing as well as the issuance and management of guarantees by government including guarantees to State-owned enterprises. The key recommendations of the diagnostic assessment include enacting a new legislation to address public debt management operations in line with the practice in the region; expanding the sector coverage of public debt beyond the budgetary central government; expanding instrument coverage to other accounts payables; reconciling stocks and flows and publishing the results transparently; enhancing the frequency of public debt reports and reactivating the dissemination of debt through the National Summary Data Page as well as the joint IMF-World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt statistics database. The authorities have adopted recommendations and developed an action plan to implement them in a phased manner.
The mission assisted the National Statistical Office of Malawi improve the quality of the published annual estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), progressed the use of Value Added Tax (VAT) data as a basis for developing quarterly series and supported development of current price estimates of GDP based on the expenditure approach (GDP-E). Specially, the mission reviewed the quality of the published GDP series and finalized Supply and Use Tables for 2017. This allowed the development of annual current price estimates of GDP-E. In addition, the mission initiated estimation of quarterly current price estimates of GDP for some activities based on data for company sales from Malawi’s VAT system.