SPC summons parastatal heads
Barely a week after summoning heads of government ministries, departments and agencies to a meeting, Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC) has today summoned heads of parastatals and State-owned enterprises (SoEs) to a meeting.
A notice from Comptroller of Statutory Corporations, Peter SimColleen Zambabani, dated June 14 2022, indicates that Zamba will meet heads of statutory corporations and SoEs at Malawi Institute of Management in Lilongwe at 10am.
The meeting with Zamba comes at a time most parastatals continue to misfire, surviving on bailouts from the fiscus.
“The purpose of the meeting is for SPC to share her vision with all chief executive officers of statutory corporations/ State owned enterprises,” Simbani’s letter reads.
Speaking when he presented the 2022-23 National Budget Statement, Finance Minister Sosten Gwengwe said there are minimum performance and key deliverables that Malawians expect from SoEs as his ministry considers the many bailout requests from them.
“A good example is the Lilongwe Water Board, which, after starting implementing their turn-around strategy, is now reporting some profits. This, honourable members, shows that it is possible to turn around SoEs and there is no better time to pay more attention to SoEs than now,” he said.
He added that, to strengthen financial oversight over SoEs, reforms are being implemented, including the formulation of guidelines for issuance of parastatal guarantees and issuance of letters of consent to enable borrowing by parastatals.
