{"id":10347,"date":"2013-09-16T11:19:49","date_gmt":"2013-09-16T11:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=10347"},"modified":"2013-09-16T11:19:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T11:19:49","slug":"malawi-sells-jet-for-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=10347","title":{"rendered":"Malawi sells jet for food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/malawijet.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-10345\" alt=\"malawijet\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/malawijet.jpg\" width=\"299\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/malawijet.jpg 299w, https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/malawijet-70x40.jpg 70w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 299px) 85vw, 299px\" \/><\/a>President Joyce Banda decided last year to sell the jet, bought by her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika for $22m, due to the cost of running it.<\/p>\n<p>Former colonial power Britain, Malawi&#8217;s main bilateral donor, reduced its aid to Malawi by $4.7m after the 14-passenger aircraft was purchased.<\/p>\n<p>Mutharika, who died last year from heart attack, often defended the buying of the jet, saying it was cheap to run and a status symbol for the poor southern African nation.<\/p>\n<p>In July, the United Kingdom said it would provide Malawi with $20m to alleviate \u00a0the &#8220;looming food crisis&#8221; in southern Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Lynne Featherstone, the UK&#8217;s international development minister, said the funds would &#8220;save countless lives&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Malawi, which was a net exporter of maize just a few years ago, has now seen stocks depleted to a quarter of its annual average after the worst harvest in seven years<\/p>\n<p>Price hikes and unpredictable weather have left food stocks dangerously low in the region, the government said.<\/p>\n<p>Since taking office, Banda has introduced a host of cost-cutting measures and uses commercial airlines to travel outside the country.<\/p>\n<p>The presidential aircraft was auctioned off to a Virgin Islands company, Bohnox Enterprise Ltd and the deal was announced in May.<\/p>\n<p>The luxury jet cost Malawi about $300,000 a year in maintenance and insurance, a government official revealed. &#8211; Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Joyce Banda decided last year to sell the jet, bought by her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika for $22m, due to the cost of running it. Former colonial power Britain, Malawi&#8217;s main bilateral donor, reduced its aid to Malawi by $4.7m after the 14-passenger aircraft was purchased. Mutharika, who died last year from heart attack, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=10347\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Malawi sells jet for food&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[6241,129,6242,6243,6240,6244,2358],"class_list":["post-10347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-14-passenger-aircraft","tag-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-looming-food-crisis","tag-lynne-featherstone","tag-president-joyce-banda","tag-the-uks-international-development-minister","tag-united-kingdom"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/malawijet.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10348,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347\/revisions\/10348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}