Some electrical companies in the country have joined hands to form seven joint ventures that will enable them compete favourably for contracts under the US$350 million Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Power Compact project in the country.<\/p>\n
This follows observations that there is lack of capacity locally to handle major activities in the project and that most contracts would end up being taken by foreign companies.<\/p>\n
However, Electrical Contractors Association of Malawi (Elcam) president Montfort Mataya said the contractors have formed joint companies which have been registered with capacity to take up some of the projects.<\/p>\n
He said the group got assistance and technical support from the National Construction Industry Council (NCIC) in the formation of the joint ventures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are ready with the capacity needed,\u201d said Matay<\/p>\n
He admitted that without the joint ventures, most of the companies would not have been able to win contracts under the Power Compact project whose main component is the construction of three power substations in Balaka, Lilongwe and the north.<\/p>\n
The project also involves construction of new power transmission lines to connect the three sub stations and contracts under the components are expected to be awarded by November this year.<\/p>\n
The local companies hope to be sub-contracted by the main contractors who are expected to be foreign given the magnitude of the works.<\/p>\n
The MCA Malawi Deputy Chief Executive Officer Lameck Mithi admitted recently that Malawian companies are failing to qualify for the projects so far due to lack of capacity.<\/p>\n
\u201cLocal companies are struggling to qualify because they are competing at international level as per the conditions of the project. Some of the local companies cannot even produce audited financial reports for the past five years, which is one of the requirements,\u201d said Mithi.<\/p>\n
He said so far, the contracts that have been given to local contractors include construction of houses for some displaced families in areas where the power lines will pass through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some electrical companies in the country have joined hands to form seven joint ventures that will enable them compete favourably for contracts under the US$350 million Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Power Compact project in the country. This follows observations that there is lack of capacity locally to handle major activities in the project and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974","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=6974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}