The Malawi government has appointed South African hotel operator Peermont to manage the country’s five-star hotel and international confer-ence centre in the capital, Lilongwe.

Malawi constructed the Presidential Hotel and Bingu International Conference Centre using the proceeds of a $90-million loan from the Export & Import Bank of the People’s Republic of China.

Peermont CEO Bruce Page-Wood and his technical team visited Malawi last month to undertake a technical audit of the complex, called Umodzi Park.

“We are excited to engage with the Malawi government for a prospective management con-tract of the facility,” says Page-Wood.
Umodzi Park Acting CEO Charles Kacherenga says Peermont is expected to initially invest $5-million to start running the facility.

“From the projections they have made, this fig- ure will be enough to [secure] a loan from a bank and start operations without burdening the Malawi government,” says Kacherenga.

The Malawi government, which invited inter- national bids for the hotel management contract, earlier engaged another South African firm, Legacy Hotels, for discussions on the manage-ment of the facility.

Former Tourism Minister Moses Kunkuyu, how- ever, says the deal with Legacy did not material-ise owing to “differences over legal issues”.

“We invited Legacy for negotiations for a lease agreement, as opposed to a management contract, on condition that [the company was] to further develop Umodzi Park into a mixed-use facility. “We, however, could not agree on certain legal issues,” says Kunkuyu.

Besides the construction of the hotel and con- ference centre, the Chinese have financed a number of projects in Malawi, including the con-struction of a national stadium, currently under way in Lilongwe, a new Parliament building, also in Lilongwe, the Karonga–Chitipa road, in the north of the country, and the Malawi University of Science and Technology, in the southern dis-trict of Thyolo.