CoST Malawi recently unveiled its new three year Business Plan that will run from 2015 to 2018 at a ceremony attended by CoST Champion and Vice President, Saulos Chilima, the CoST Malawi Multi-Stakeholder Group and Development Partners’ representatives.

The $750,000 business plan, titled, Value Addition to Public Infrastructure Development Projects’ seeks to consolidate recent lessons and gains in order to improve the governance of public infrastructure and safeguard the huge investment which the Malawi Government together with its Development Partners plough into the sector.

These gains included the cancellation of contracts in relation to an assurance report commissioned by CoST Malawi. The report revealed a number of issues of concern including suspension of works due to delayed payments, time and cost overruns on public infrastructure projects.

It seeks to achieve this by building the capacity of procuring entities, civil society, the media, the CoST Malawi – Multi-Stakeholder Group, and other relevant stakeholders to uphold good governance in public infrastructure. This is envisaged to ensure that both the demand and supply side of the transparency and accountability equation are adequately strengthened.

At the ceremony, the CoST Champion remarked;

‘The government is more than ready to provide political support to the CoST programme by ensuring that there are enabling legal instruments in place to support disclosure.’

He further noted that the CoST programme complements government’s effort in reforming the Public Service and expressed hope that development partners will channel resources to support the CoST-Malawi Business Plan.

The plan has been developed at a time when the country is trying to implement various reforms following the 2013 ‘Cashgate’ scandal which included the misappropriation and mismanagement of public funds on a number of infrastructure projects.