Time to Dollarise Malawi....

Our Malawi local currency stands no chance in the globalised set up. An excursion outside our borders is proof enough, no one seems interested in the Malawi Kwacha unless they are coming to Malawi. Our currency's journey so far seems to be on persistent nose-dive value-wise in relation to say the US Dollar or British Pound; on the basis of that I understand the reluctance to devalue as per the GOM plc current stand-off with the IMF. Time to "Dollarise" Malawi......time to go back to the Bretton Woods Institution "approved" currencies :-(.

Considerable depreciation in value of the Malawi currency unit the Kwacha from its originally very strong one Malawi Pound/Kwacha to one British Pound exchange rate in 1971 under the British Pound Sterling/Malawi pound par value system of 1965-1973......... the local currency‟s devaluation continued via a number of exchange rate value systems; (a) Peg to weighted Basket of British Pound and the US dollar (1973-1975), (b) The Peg to the IMF SDR (1975-1984), (c) Peg to the Weighted-Basket of Seven Currencies (1984-1994), and finally the (d) Floatation of the Malawi kwacha (February, 1994) (Reserve Bank of Malawi [Online], Evolution of Exchange Rate Determination in Malawi: Past and Present, Available at: http://www.rbm.mw/general_info/index.asp?suburl=currhistory