Monitoring trends in public spending on agriculture: the case of Malawi

This report presents the results of studies that explore trends in the magnitude, share and compositions of public spending on the agriculture sector in Malawi which comes under the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (crops, livestock and irrigation), Fisheries and Forestry. The aim of the studies was to analyze the recent trends in levels of public spending in agriculture and the progress Malawi is making towards achieving the AU/NEPAD target of allocating at least 10% of its national budget to the agriculture sector. To achieve this, the studies used data from 1999/00 to 2006/07 on public spending on agriculture from the Ministry of Planning and Development. The public spending (a) as planned and disbursed (actual) and (b) on development (capital) projects vis-à-vis the recurrent projects and by sources, government versus donors was analyzed. Spending by functions in terms of crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry and trends in spatial or geographical allocation were also explored with trends analyses. In addition, the studies aim to show whether resource potentials are explored in allocating public spending among development programs or subprograms as well as across agricultural development divisions.