Parliament allows govt to borrow K13 bn for Masaf IV

Parliament Friday allowed Government to borrow from the International Development Association (IDA) $32.8 million (about K13.12 billion) for the Masaf IV project.

Speaking during presentation of the Bill in Parliament, Minister of Finance Goodal Gondwe, said the proposed project would be a second-generation safety-nets program, which would improve key safety-net programmes such as Cash for Productive Community Public Works through the Local Development Fund (LDF), Social Cash Transfer, and Livelihoods and Skills Development through Community Savings and Investment Programme (Comsip).

“Apart from that, some of the resources will be used for programme management and the Masaf IV project will have three components and these are; Productive Safety-Nets, Systems and Capacity Building and Project Management,” Gondwe said.

He said that government realises the importance of having a robust and sustainable safety-nets programme in place as these are important when it comes to the protection of the poor and vulnerable whose livelihoods are always under threat due to natural and unnatural causes hence the coming of this bill.

Gondwe added that government will finance transfers for multiple Productive Community Driven Public Works, which are aimed at increasing communities and household livelihood opportunities and assets. He says through this component, government will finance projects that have been identified by the communities as priority projects.

“These community projects that will be considered under this component shall, among other things, range from water supply and irrigation, aforestation and bridge construction,” he said.

The Minister of Finance also commended IDA for providing this loan to the government of Malawi.

In response to the presentation of the bill, Member of Parliament for Lilongwe South Peter Dimba, who spoke on behalf of MCP, said that MCP support the bill because it seeks to raise funds for extra poor people and other important developments, but cautioned on excessive borrowing.

The passing of the bill also marked the end of the first meeting of the 44th session of parliament.—Mana