OPC Yet To Return K112 Million Remaining From Independence Celebrations

The Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) has announced that it is the process of retuning money amounting to K112 million to treasury which remained from this year’s independence celebrations.

This is according to an expenditure report issued by Marjorie Shema, from the OPC, the K112 million is from the K200 million which was budgeted for this year’s celebrations.

Among other things, the report states that the total expenditure for the celebrations was MK 87 Million out of which MK 14 Million was paid to the Malawi Revenue Authority and while MK 203 Million was paid to the  Tourism Fund.

‘’The public may recall that the celebrations were initially planned for the three administrative regions with the main event in Lilongwe and then in Blantyre for the Southern Region and Mzuzu for the Northern Region. Owing to this earlier arrangement, the total budget for holding the celebrations in the regions was MK 243 Million.’’ reads the report.

It adds; ‘’In light of this. Treasury disbursed MK 200 Million to the Office of the President and Cabinet through an FDH account under the name Chief Secretary to Government’’.

Later on, the committee complied with the directive by President Lazarus Chakwera, the organizing committee settled to scale down the amount to MK50 Million.

However, the report says that at this time, preparatory activities for the regions had already started putting the expenditure then at around MK 87 Million.