By Mabuchi Chunga

Polytechnic based economist Betchani Tchereni says Malawi stands to benefit from a locally produced brand of sanitizers which are first of their kind.

The remarks follow the certification of Virisafe sanitizers whose main ingredients are derived from the chemical PMD and are being produced in the country.

Professor Tchereni says that local production will help reduce the amount of foreign exchange the country loses when paying to import such types of products into the country.

“The number one thing is that the more we import anything and in this case hand sanitizer because we are in a period where it is on high demanded the more foreign exchange we need.

“But we know that due to the same Covid-19 and also the underperformance of the tobacco industry we have not gained enough foreign exchange as we should have done.

“So producing anything within the country makes it better and therefore we need to begin thinking more about that so in terms of economic benefit we can will see that the macro economic environment will be assisted,” he said.

Tcheleni also said that this will also be of great value to the health sector because there is a need for the availability of the product which will come at affordable price.