By Mabvuto Kambuwe, AfricaNews reporter in Lilongwe, Malawi

The World Bank has disclosed that Malawi only used $180million out of $392 million in committed projects from the Bank under its 4th Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) which started in 2007 and is expected to end this year.

According to Malawi’s Daily Times newspaper, World Bank operations officer Christine Kamwendo said the inability to fully spend allocated resources could result into reduced allocations to the country in future programmes.

“Lack of capacity to unlock resources from the bank and the political impasse in parliament, especially in 2008 slowed down the implementation of World Bank projects in the country as some authoritisation bills could not be passed,” she said.

Deputy Minister of Finance Frazer Nihorya while accepting that the matter is really of major concern told the paper that some line ministries in government were failing to implement donor funded projects.

“Our absorption rate for donor aid is indeed low, but it is officials from line ministries who are letting us down,” he said.

The World Bank earlier this year produced a report on its Country Assistance Strategy for Malawi in which it described the country’s absorption rate of its aid as “generally poor”.