Bingu National Stadium (BNS) will officially be opened on January 28 2017, the third time that goal posts have been shifted on the opening of the Chinese Government-funded facility.<\/p>\n
The government had earmarked October then December 10 for the opening, which was supposed to be spiced up by a friendly match between Malawi National Football Team and a select side from China.<\/p>\n
In the latest development, the facility\u2019s Operations Manager, Eric Ning\u2019ang\u2019a, on Thursday confirmed the new opening date.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had several meetings and finally we agreed to open the facility next year. The President [Peter Mutharika] has already approved the date and he will officially open the facility. We are also expecting a delegation of more than 50 people from China for the opening ceremony,\u201dNing\u2019ang\u2019a explained.<\/p>\n
Construction was completed last year in November, but the facility required extra-funding of K841 million from the Malawi government\u2019s coffers to construct a sewer line and erect electricity connection cables.<\/p>\n
Ning\u2019ang\u2019a said the last phase of the construction will be completed soon, adding that engineers have since advised that the natural turf requires dark soil every November.<\/p>\n
The shift in the opening date could be a big blow to Luso Television, which has organised Bus Ipite <\/em>bonanza whose second leg\u2014between Nyasa Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers\u2014was earmarked for the stadium on January 2, 2016.<\/p>\n Football Association of Malawi (Fam) first vice-President, James Mwenda, yesterday said the association will wait until the facility is ready.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the owners say the facility is not ready, as Fam, we have no option but to use the available sports facilities,\u201d Mwenda said.<\/p>\n Super League of Malawi (Sulom) Treasurer, Tiya Somba- Banda, said the delay in the opening of the facility did not affect their league calendar for this season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are looking forward to the opening of the stadium and that will be a big plus to us. But the delay did not disturb our plans because we did not include it in match venues for this season,\u201d Somba-Banda said.<\/p>\n The facility was constructed with a concessional loan from the Chinese Government to the tune of $65 million (about K29 billion) payable in 20 years with a grace period of seven years. The loan will be repaid at an annual interest rate of two percent.<\/p>\n Once opened, BNS will be home to the Flames as Kamuzu Stadium was condemned as unfit to host international games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bingu National Stadium (BNS) will officially be opened on January 28 2017, the third time that goal posts have been shifted on the opening of the Chinese Government-funded facility. The government had earmarked October then December 10 for the opening, which was supposed to be spiced up by a friendly match between Malawi National Football […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36729,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36726\/revisions\/36729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}