No investor for pipeline
Government is yet to find a contractor for the multi-billion kwacha oil pipeline from Beira in Mozambique to Nsanje—five years after plans to construct it were developed.
The oil pipeline—estimated to cost $186 million (about K103 billion)—is aimed at helping the government to secure regular supply of oil products, particularly diesel, petrol and paraffin.
Spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy, Natural Resources and Mining Joseph Kalowekamo told Business News on Thursday that government has not yet received a response on the oil pipeline.
However, Kalowekamo said government is still selling the project to potential investors.
Once implemented, the project is supposed to reduce transportation costs, delays in delivery of fuels and prevent pilferage of fuel by some transporters.
Malawi currently imports more than 90 percent of its oil products via the ports of Beira and Nacala, in tanker trucks, while the remainder arrives through Dar-es-Salam in Tanzania.
By using the new oil pipeline, Malawi is expected to receive over 900 million litres of fuel per year, potentially increasing the country’s fuel reserves to three months, as compared to the current 10-14days.
According to the half year performance for 2015 for Malawi Investment and Trade Centre (MITC), the country, within the first half of 2015, registered investment pledges worth $368 million from 41 companies which the institution registered within the One Stop Service Centre setup.
MITC public relations manager Deliby Chimbalu told Business News in August that Malawi was likely to register more investment pledges as some investments worth over $1 billion were secured during the Malawi Investment Forum in June.
This is probably one of Government’s biggest lies. In 2011, I was an advisor to a Consortium that put up one of the bids to carry out the pipeline project. If I can remember it correctly about 4 or 5 companies put up similar bids. We were prepared to do a BOO (build own operate) project, as long as Malawi Gov committed itself to use atleast 80% of the pipeline capacity for 20 years. That was the end of our bids, we never heard from Gov/MERA anymore.
The problem is Malawi Gov is never serious with these things. We had to fly in engineering and economic consultants from Brazil, South Africa and Mozambique to put together our bid, in the end Gov never even aknowledged.
We can do it ourselves if we stop corruption munthu ovutika kumazibelanso we will never succeed if we don’t STOP CORRUPTING