Malawi Investment and Trade Centre (MITC) Chief Executive Officer Paul Kwengwere, has told Zodiak that establishing the Agro-processing Special Economic Zones (AP-SEZ) will facilitate business speed, incentives and infrastructure support which are required to attract a lot of foreign investors for the country's value addition and export drive.

"When we are attracting investment and investors, there is a lot of competition. What is essence is speed, availability of resources and what they want.

"So most of the investors when they come in they have the concept, they want to start may be a factory, but then processes take forever. So when they try to go through those processes, some might decide to go to another countries where the processes are so faster.

"In this particular case, with all this available land, the industrial area, we have what investors want," Kwengwere said.

In 2021/2022 fiscal year, government planned to establish five zones in Chigumula and Matindi in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Mangochi.

In these geographically delimited areas, government facilitates industrial activity through fiscal and regulatory incentives and infrastructure support to attract investors.

Meanwhile, speaking to Zodiak on Friday after he inspected land for Chigumula industrial park, Minister of Trade and Industry Mark Katsonga indicated that hundreds of investors have shown interest to establish manufacturing entities in these sites.

Katsonga believes the sites will help to fast-track industrialization and modern production systems which would lead to the reduction of prices of goods in the country.

"We are now talking about industrial development, modernizing our production systems. To achieve that, we have acquired as a ministry, land in all the four regions. The aim is to enable everybody; be it foreign or local investors to acquire land as when they need it", Katsonga said.

Meanwhile, at Chigumula industrial park, plot distribution, mapping, power and water infrastructure have been done.