MEC in a fix over K690m invested money

Pollster, the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has confessed it might lose out in a K690 million investment venture with Alliance Capital Limited following the Reserve Bank of Malawi’s (RBM) decision to revoke the latter’s license as far as issues of management are concerned.

RBM suspended the portfolio manager license for Alliance Capital Limited for breach of technical operating requirements as required by the financial services law.

Chairperson Judge Chifundo Kachale told the Budget and Finance Committee of Parliament on Thursday where he also disclosed that MEC’s budget for constituency re-demarcation was falling short by about K563 million.

Kachale and team were summoned by the Committee to explain how financial resources were utilized in the 2020-21 financial year.

Kachale said failure to recoup the investment from Alliance Capital Limited was choking the scheduled constituency demarcation exercise, which requires K1.263 billion.

“The resources were sitting idle; as such, [members of] the previous commission decided to invest the nomination fees to generate some more money.

“We, as a commission, have already engaged Alliance Capital to liquidate the resources and make the monies available to us,” Kachale said.

According to him, the Treasury released funds amounting to K700 million for use during the demarcation exercise and also gave them the go-ahead to use resources raised from nomination fees from candidates.

But, according to Kachale, monies for nomination fees were locked up in investment the electoral body made with Alliance Capital Limited.

He added that failure to get back the money from Alliance Capital Limited had resulted in the electoral body facing a shortfall of K563 million as the budget stands at K1.2 billion.

Kachale asked the committee members to help the electoral body lobby for more funds for it to ably run the demarcation exercise.

Budget and Finance Committee of Parliament Chairperson Gladys Ganda said they would look into MEC’s request during the mid-year budget review meeting.

She added that they would try their best to mediate the issue between MEC and Alliance Capital so that the latter could release the funds in question.

“The issue with Alliance Capital presents a very tough situation; MEC is asking for more money but they have money sitting idle at Alliance Capital. We will engage Alliance Capital and Reserve Bank of Malawi to map the way forward on the issue,” Ganda said.

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