The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has proposed for the need to review the country`s mining laws saying that the current ones are outdated.

PAC Chairperson Shadric Namalomba has told us that the absence of laws that are up-to-date is contributing to a number of challenges that are negatively impacting the sector which includes pricing of the minerals.

“Surely, as legislators, we should look into that and we are going to look into that, not only this aspect of samples, there are a number of issue that need to be looked at.

“The issue of transferring we have note that there is no benchmark and regulation for example if it is gypsum, what is the minimum price that royalties could be paid on, we don’t have a mechanism of setting up those prices,” said Namalomba.

According to Namalomba, Malawi needs to align herself to the modern world on how it will be conducting its mining business by learning from neighbouring where the sector has proper guidelines.

“This is an opportunity that we should go back into the mining laws and look at them and reflect, let`s learn from Botswana, Zambia as to how they have done it and what can we borrow from them.

“So, we needed to look at that to benchmark and look our laws and to see how we can strengthen them and how we can promote our mining,” said Namalomba.

Mining is one of the development agendas that Malawi is envisioning to achieve by the year 2063 through its national blueprint; Malawi 2063.