The Malawian economy is observed to have performed relatively better in the first fifteen years after independence 1964-1979 (njolwa 1982 Mulaga and weiss 1996 and Chirwa 2003 this is supported by the country's performance in terms of the share of manufacturing output in gross domestic product GDP growth rate increased from 8 percent in 1964 to 12 percent in 1979 with the overall GDP groeth rate averaging 5.3 percent