Sports Council gets K698m in provisional budget
Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) has been allocated K698 million in the provisional four-month budget.
However, MNCS acting executive secretary Henry Mereka yesterday said allocations for affiliates have not yet been made.
He said: “Allocations to associations depend on programmes, but the figure amount includes our general operations.”
On whether the allocation will be enough to meet the council’s operations and sports associations’ programmes within the stipulated period, Mereka said: “My understanding is that this is provisional and we shall ultilise what we can.
“We shall be able to make such statements later, but obviously council needs more resources to fulfil its ambition of upgrading and constructing sport infrastructure such as BAT ground, Kamuzu Institute for Youth and Blantyre Youth Centre.”
On June 30, Minister of Finance Felix Mlusu presented a K722.4 billion provisional four-month budget in Parliament.
Earlier this year, before the change of government, Treasury ordered Sports Council to frame its programmes for the current financial year within K2 billion, a figure that fell short of demands by associations.
The K2 billion limit sparked fears that there could be a huge shortfall for the sports sector if all the programmes that were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic are to be fixed in the 2020/21 fiscal year.
Mereka then said: “The annual subventions we get can never be enough. This time, however, it is going to be tougher because we will have to counter the effects of Covid-19. That would consume more funds.
Football Association of Malawi and Netball Association of Malawi usually get a lion’s share and their proposed budgets for the current financial year were over K2 billion in total.
