Amid perennial electricity woes plaguing the country, a K33 billion five-year World Bank project that should have helped to ease the problem has stalled for almost 18 months, The Daily Times has learnt.

The delays are attributed to failure by the implementing agencies to meet World Bank’s procurement procedures due to what the Bank says are capacity challenges in the implementing organisations.

The Bank gave Malawi U$ 84.7 million made up of a grant amounting to U$65.4 million and U$19.3 million credit on June 28, 2011 to help improve quality and operational capacity of the country’s hydroelectricity supply.

However, since July 2012 when U$1.2m was made available to the Ministry of Energy and a U$5m given to Escom, no other disbursements have been made.

Meanwhile the two implementing agencies continue to move to and fro in an effort to meet the Bank’s procurement criteria

Both the Ministry of Energy and Escom have indicated the Bank’s procurement procedures are long and cumbersome.

But at a recent meeting in Blantyre, it was observed that Escom, for example, had only spent U$135,000 of the funds that had been allocated to it in July last year.

In its May 2013 report, the World Bank has expressed increasing dissatisfaction with progress on the project and has downgraded the project to “moderately satisfactory”.
According to another report posted on the Bank’s website, after the last supervision in October 2012, government and Escom were reminded to accelerate the implementation of the project.

“Detailed discussions were held with the Government of Malawi and Escom on how to accelerate project implementation. There have been some delays in project activities, particularly in procurement, with the result that very limited disbursement has taken place to date,” reads the report.

Escom’s Public Relations Manager Kitty Chingota said in an interview that some of the delays could be attributed to the bureaucracy and “rigorous procurement procedures” of the Bank which the project has been subjected to as per World Bank Procurement Guidelines

“This process has no shortcuts….At each stage [of procurement], the documents have to be submitted to the World Bank for review and No-Objection,” she said.

Spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy Joseph Kalowekamo also made similar observations in a separate interview on Wednesday.

He said most project activities require consultancy services which have to be acquired through the Bank’s own procurement procedure.

Kalowekamo was, however, upbeat that most of the contracts would be awarded by the end of the year and that by 2014, there should be better implementation progress.

The Bank also acknowledges that implementation of activities has slackened owing to bottlenecks in procurement which has affected actual disbursement of funds to the project.

“The project is currently procuring consultants. We therefore expect acceleration in disbursement in the coming year when procurement of goods begins.

“However, we are aware of limited procurement capacity in both Escom and the Ministry of Energy,” said outgoing World Bank Country Manager Sandra Bloemenkamp said.

The envisaged project outcomes included rehabilitation, upgrade and expansion of existing Escom transmission and distribution network with focus on specific sites where “most urgent works” are required.

Other components include feasibility studies for a number of potential hydropower sites over a range of capacities and geographical locations thought to be crucial to expanding the country’s installed generation capacity and the diversity of sources of power generation. – By Gabriel Kamlomo

BNL FILE PHOTO – Chingota says the process has no shortcuts