Ministry of Trade and Industry to roll out National Single Window end March
The Ministry of Trade and Industry says it has reached an advanced stage in the process of establishing the electronic Malawi National Single Window (MNSW) with the pilot phase scheduled to roll out end of March this year.
MNSW is an electronic platform which will allow traders involving in import and export as well as transit trade of goods with other international markets to lodge their applications through one single entry point.
In a exclusive interview with Nyasatimes, Director of Trade in Goods in the Ministry, Charity Musonzo highlighted that the current process is hectic considering that institutions and agencies involving in trade are working separately with different time-frames, creating alot of costs to a traders, so this is to ensure that they eliminate the manure system and bring in the automated one which will be facilitated online.
“Most of the traders they say why should we go to the Ministry of Trade when we can easily maneuver and go to the parallel boarders where they will use Kabaza to get their goods in this country or out of this country, so we have been noticing that it has been having a lot of negative impacts both on traders and the government, most of people feel like the normal process is too expensive and takes time and cost so they resulted in smuggling their goods and that is resulting in bringing in goods that are not well certified by the Malawi Bureau of Standards,” she said.
Musonzo added that they want to bring in sanity in terms of theft and destruction of products that comes with the use smuggling routes as it also affects the correction of data and revenues by the government bringing in negative impacts to the economy of Malawi and the traders as well.
Through the window, 21 government agencies are going to benefit with real time information as reports will be generated through the system bringing in transparency and accountability.
“This will also enhance our competitiveness on the international market because most of our trading partners are already using the National Single Window system, they are already connected online, so let’s say on the certificate of origin we are now migrating from manual to an electronic one, so with the coming in of the system that will also provide a seamless way of trading with other countries,” she added.
MNSW is being established to enable traders to clear goods through a single submission of data and electronic processing and issuance of authorizations by all the regulatory agencies involved in issuing permits, licenses and clearances for import, export and transit processes.
Key regulatory departments and agencies that are involved in the process including the following; Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA), the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBS), Ministry of Agriculture, Malawi Police, and Ministry of Health, which are also coordinated through a National Trade Facilitation Committee (NTFC) to oversee the implementation of the single window system.
