Malawi Government and Football Association of Malawi (Fam) will likely dig deeper into their coffers as over K800 million is required for the Malawi National Football Team to fulfill all fixtures in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifiers which kick off on May 30.
Malawi are in Group D of the qualifiers and will start their campaign against Ethiopia at home before travelling to Guinea.
Fam needs at least K100 million for each home match whereas K170 million is required for one away match.
This means Fam will spend an estimated K300 million on the home matches and K510 million on away assignments.
However, the budget would rise if Bingu National Stadium were declared unfit to host the qualifiers.
Such a declaration would require Fam to hire an appropriate match venue in another country to host Flames matches.
Fam General Secretary Alfred Gunda was elusive on the actual budget for the qualifiers.
’’We are engaging government on that. Our experience has shown that we are put on the back foot when figures start flying around before such discussions. For your information, a home match costs us an estimated K100 million and an away fixture costs twice as much,” Gunda said.
Fam gets funds from the government through Malawi National Council of Sports.
It is yet to be seen how Sports Council will treat the matter after it was allocated K2.4 billion in the 2022-23 budget.
Out of K2.4 billion, K2.015 billion is for other recurrent transactions (ORT) whereas K400 million is for developmental budget.
The council’s public relations and communications officer, Edgar Ntulumbwa, asked for time to disclose Fam’s allocation.
Last year, Fam received almost K1 billion from council for World Cup and Afcon qualifiers, including the finals in Cameroon.