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MCC VP assess energy compact

Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) deputy vice-president Jonathan Bloom has appealed for patience, saying the US foreign aid agency’s compact programme is within the project’s timeline.

He said soon people will start seeing work on the ground.

mcc-vice-presidentBloom, who is responsible for MCC’s support to development and implementation of compact programmes globally, on Tuesday made a tour of Nkula A Hydro-Power station in Blantyre accompanied by Millennium Challenge Account-Malawi (MCA-M) officials.

Nkula A, as part of the infrastructure development component of the project, will benefit from the five-year $350.7 million (about K158 billion, at the current exchange rate) MCC compact.

“People don’t believe it will happen until they see bulldozers moving. The pace will pick up quite quickly. There are number of challenges for large-scale projects,” he told journalists.

Bloom is hopeful that the propject will take three and half years to complete.

He commended the MCA-M team and said according to the timeline, the programme is on schedule.

The project is divided into four components, which include the infrastructure development, expected to use about $257.1 million (K116 billion) of the project’s fund, and power sector reform, expected to consume $25.7 million (K12 billion), environment and natural resource management project, allocated $27.9 million (K13 billion), to ensure sustainable land use management practices within Shire River catchments, and  the social and gender integration action plan, which focuses on the institutionalisation of social and gender perspectives across the compact’s projects and activities.

The infrastructure development project will involve the rehabilitation, upgrade and modernisation of Escom’s generation, transmission and distribution assets.

Transmission lines will also be upgraded through the construction of 400 kilovolts lines from Phombeya in Balaka to Lilongwe, to cover the Southern and Central regions and a 132 kv line parallel to the existing 66 kv and 33 kv lines from Chintheche in Nkhata Bay to Luwinga [in Mzuzu] and Bwengu in Rumphi in the Northern Region.

MCA-M chief executive officer Susan Banda said, thus far, they have disbursed $20 million (K9 billion) but said at the of the calendar year, they would have disbursed between $170 (K77 billion) and $200 million (K90 billion) for the projects.

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