National Assembly passes a Loan Authorization bill worth US $60 million which is expected to lead to vast improvement on Malawi economies of trade and transportation.
Among terms of the World Bank loan is 10 year grace period within 40 years that will take Malawi to repay the loan. There is 0.075% of interest for the money used but with service charge of 0.5 for unused money.
The National Assembly passed the bill 'International Development Association (Southern Africa Trade and Transport Facilitation Programme Phase 2) Loan Authorisation'.
No amendment were made but Malawi Congress party through its spokesperson on Finance matters in the House, Alexander Kusamba Dzonzi urged government to also consider improvement of water transport.
Goodall Gondwe Minister of Finance when bringing the Bill in the House, said the bill will support the infrastructure improvement of the three corridors of Beila, Nacara and Dar es Salam.
He said the project will take four years because of number of stages that are to be done that will imply more activities including train young people on issues of the clearance of commodities and various other trades that are involved in the transit goods.
On Mozambican routes Gondwe said, a rail way project is about to complete on the Nacara route and that at Beila, Mozambicans are improving the port. Thereofore he said Malawi is looking for the possibility of improving the railway from Beila to Blantyre and also improve the Chilomo bridge.
While on the side of Tanzania, the Finance Minister said the route to Dar es Salaam road are in bad state including Chiweta road. He therefore said through the loan, there are number of things that will be done to make Dar es Salaam a first class route and to make it cheep on trade route.
“But aside from that there are other services that are going to be improved. Things like transit traffic from Dar es Salaam to the South. On Songwe boarder for example you have one side which is the Tanzanian side and the other one is for Malawi. And a Transporter has to declare his goods twice.
So, this loan helps us put facilities in such a way that we are going to have one window in Songwe as well as in Mwanza, Dedza and so forth.” He said
He added “Also in the process we are going to improve the health facilities of the people involved around there”
The project worth US $60 million loan which is close to K30 billion will take four years because of number of stages to be done that will imply to more activities including train young people on issues of the clearance of commodities and various other trades that are involve in the transit goods.
No comments:
Post a Comment