United States Ambassador to Malawi, Virginia Palmer, has said Malawi needs heavy investment in the energy sector to address the problem of power woes that have crippled the economy.<\/p>\n
Palmer was commenting on the impact of the $350.7 million five-year Millennium Challenge Compact (MCC), which is being funded by her government, on Malawi\u2019s energy sector. The compact expires in September 2018.<\/p>\n
The compact has facilitated the installation of transmission lines that could help the country attract more investment in power generation.<\/p>\n
However, Palmer said Malawi should take more measures aimed at reforming the power sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, all the electricity that is being produced is being sold for less than it costs to make it and Escom [Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi] is losing money.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if Escom is losing money, private investors would not come and build power plants to sell power to Escom. So, we need a cost-reflective tariff and that is something very important. I hope [this] will happen very soon,\u201d said Palmer.<\/p>\n
She said, while the component of infrastructure construction, was going very well under the compact, there has been a slow pace in face-lifting the power sector reforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Escom\u2019s financial stability would be critical to attracting IPPP. I think Escom has some major debts\u2014 both to Egenco and for past procurements\u2014 and that is one thing the government has to tackle,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Palmer has hinted on the possibility of Malawi getting a second compact, either in water, girl-child education or in more power investment if it does well on the score card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United States Ambassador to Malawi, Virginia Palmer, has said Malawi needs heavy investment in the energy sector to address the problem of power woes that have crippled the economy. Palmer was commenting on the impact of the $350.7 million five-year Millennium Challenge Compact (MCC), which is being funded by her government, on Malawi\u2019s energy sector. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64163","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=64163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64166,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64163\/revisions\/64166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}