PICMA was awarded a contract to conduct a national and regional assessment of the warehousing and distribution capabilities for providing warehousing and distribution services for health products in Malawi. This included an extensive review of the national medical stores organization, Central Medical Stores Trust (CMST).

The purpose of the study was to identify the options for improving the cost and service levels of the public sector warehousing and distribution sectors. The study consisted of a thorough desk review of the local and regional logistics market (public, private, NGO) and included an outline of what capacity exists in Malawi and the region. We developed several costings exercises that presented multiple implementation scenarios ranging from fully outsourcing core operations to constructing new storage facilities.