Blantyre District Council Commissioner, Alex Mdooko, says the recent K44.7 billion approved budget for the 2024/25 financial year will assist the council to implement various developmental projects and social protection programs in the district.
The District Commissioner was speaking after the approval of the budget in Blantyre, at an extraordinary full council meeting.
“In this budget we have projects including the construction of school blocks, staff houses and completion of Mpemba market, in addition to rehabilitating all health facilities in Blantyre. These will be implemented under DDF, CDF, GESD from the World Bank, locally generated revenue projects and a new component of the rehabilitation of health facilities,” said Mdooko.
He added that apart from that they also have social support interventions like Social Cash Transfer and Climate Smart Enhanced Public Works.
Meanwhile, the 2024/25 budget has seen an increase of 55% from the previous budget that was pegged at K28.7 billion.
Commenting on the increase of the budget, Chairperson for the Finance and Audit committee, Councilor Jeremia Jumbe, highlighted that the budget has gone up because of the increase of different items such as salaries, leave grants, special allowances, transport allowances, chiefs and councillors’ Honoraria, among others.
Out of the budget, personal emoluments have been allocated a total of K31.8 billion, an increase of 45 percent from K21.9 billion for the 2023/24 budget.
On the other hand, the development budget has been budgeted K2 billion under the District Development Fund (DDF), Constituency Development Fund (CDF), Water Fund, Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD) and others.
