The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
The bank had been profitable from 1965 to 1987 except for 1978 when their buildings in Masaka were destroyed in the Tanzania war so the loss of those buildings were written off resulting in an overall loss.
Otherwise the bank had a history of profitability. The fact that it was government owned had not stopped it from profitability.
China’s top banks are government owned
Today the four biggest banks in terms of assets in the whole world are government owned: ICBC, China Construction Bank, The Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of China. The idea that government cannot operate a profitable institution is a sickening lie.
Alongside the restructuring of the Bank of Uganda – with advisors from Washington, London and Australia- came the closure of Cooperative Bank and the restructuring of the Uganda Development Bank.
The President of Uganda resisted successfully pressure from the IMF to sell Uganda Development Bank.
When I became minister of finance in 2005 I was immediately required to come up with a paper on micro finance. I moved around the country looking for examples of successful micro finance practice. I found successful saccos and recommended that model. It was adopted by cabinet.
My colleague General Saleh worked with me to draft regulations for the Saccos. Before we could take them to Parliament for adoption we were dropped from finance!
In my case I had just been voted the best Minister of finance with GDP economic growth rates ranging from 7% to 10.3% perhaps the highest on record!
Looking back I wonder if my dismissal in 2009 when our attempts to build local capital through SACCOS was similar to my dismissal in 1996 when I was sacked from UCB for making it profitable and resisting its sale.
When we proposed SACCOS as a means to increase domestic savings and credits for our people we knew that they had to be effectively regulated. Without regulation and supervision people’s money would be stolen.
When we left finance in 2009 the regulations were put aside until 2018 when they were finally legislated by Parliament. By then many saccos including the one in my parish which had once flourished and helped so many people had failed.
Incidentally with the new regulations the hand of the Bank of Uganda was smuggled in and the processes of registration became more complicated.
For example, before you can register a Sacco members have to be trained by a government commercial officer. In every case I have been involved we had to pay at least 100,000 to the commercial officer as “transport “ to the commercial officer to come and train us. Even in Kampala!
Columnist Herbert Sabiti’s recent observations about the extension of BOU into savings and profit cooperatives will see the last window of freedom to form local capital subjected to the control of the number one neocolonial agency in Uganda.
The facts are clear: Bank of Uganda has the most continuous presence of foreign advisers of any institution I know of in Uganda. The impact of that advice is the closure and persecution of Indigenous financial institutions.
No Ugandan can open a bank!
It is clear that no Ugandan can open a bank now. The bank of Uganda has made sure that that no longer happens.
Moreover, even the few avenues that we tried to open for Ugandans such as saccos are being closed.
The threat to our future has never been greater than it is today. The ideology that foreign capital should be given every privilege while African investment is persecuted and treated with contempt is before our eyes.
We are made to see foreign investment being praised as our own businesses and lands are taken over by foreign banks because we cannot repay loans from foreign banks given to us at exorbitant interest.
The lies that interest rates would come down if UCB was privatized were precisely that: lies.
From Congo to Cape Town the economic fate of the Black-man is as precarious as the fate of the young men on boats in the Mediterranean Sea or the young girls traveling to the Middle East only to end up as slaves, prostitutes and organ donors.
Do not be deceived. Colonialism is not only real it is growing and we are losing even the land we had remained with at “independence “.
If you do not believe me check your parish and see how much land remains with the natives and how much has been bought by foreigners. I hope I am wrong. But do the research and let us know on this platform.
Our Lord was crucified for telling the truth and doing good. I am afraid we have no choice but to walk in his footsteps even as we mark remembrance of Janan Luwum and the Uganda martyrs.
“There is no greater love than this: that a man gave his life for his friends.”
Merry Christmas!
It is possible the death of indigenous banks in Uganda was actually welcomed and aided by the country’s leadership which is fearful of economically empowered Ugandans. Our leaders are agents of foreign imperialism. A government working for the betterment of life for its people would not have allowed the closure of indigenous banks with such amazing ease and speed.
Nigeria has 27 banks and only 3 are foreign owned. The top ten banks are Nigerian owned and some have branches in other parts of the world including Uganda for example United Bank for Africa, Guaranty Trust Bank, Zenith Bank and Ecobank. Foreign banks cannot own more than 10% of local banks in Nigeria as per the central bank regulations.
The top 10 banks which have a combined value of US$104 Billion in assets are: Polaris Bank, Fidelity Bank, Union Bank of Nigeria, Access Bank Nigeria PLC, United Bank for Africa (UBA), Zenith Bank Nigeria, Ecobank Nigeria, First Bank of Nigeria, Keystone Bank Limited and Guaranty Trust Bank.
No time for lamenting. It’s time for action.
The way forward;
1. Further capitalization of UDB
2. Capitalize Wazalendo and turn it into a bank
3. Scale down on the number foreign advisors at BoU
3. Rewrite our political economic model based on a national agenda and reskill our economists, lawyers, and journalists
4.Etc, etc
Recapitalizing UDB will be throwing away good money as UDB suffers from biased lending to friends, relatives, politicians, nrm power brokers ,tenderprenuers etc.
Instead government should put that money for recapitalizing UDB in Centenary bank – ( it’s Ugandan owned and has a pre-existing network of branches and banking agents and has experience of running the youth livehood funds whatever the challenges of youth livelihood funds)- and require that centenary lend those funds at less than 6% per annum + 4% management fees to sectors like construction, farming, etc that are 100% Ugandan owned business (the lending must exclude pseudo-Ugandans like those Asian migrants illegally holding Ugandan Nation IDs).
Also Government of Uganda should lower the threshold to benefit from investment incentives for genuine Ugandan citizens(excluding the Asian migrants holding Ugandan national IDs) . The threshold for 10year tax holidays, tax free imports for equipment etc should be US $10,000 investment for genuine Ugandan citizens.
Indeed stop politisizing our economy
Many of our economists, lawyers, journalists, political elites etc are mentally colonised. Govt should have a deliberate effort to emancipate its citizens ideologically.
That is the only way we as Ugandans and Africans can liberate ourselves from foreign influence and from our colonised ourselves.
The duty of engineers is to build our economy. We must task them to do that. There is no other way of looking at it.
ENGINEERS MUST BUILD THE ECONOMY. PERIOD.
Why always blame others for your shortcomings!
The statement below shows that you can get what you want.
“The President of Uganda resisted successfully pressure from the IMF to sell Uganda Development Bank.”
I do not see a government like Rwanda giving excuses for failiure!
But you can’t neglect the problems these local banks had, especially the political intervention and corruption. Just recently UDB accounts were qualified by the auditors.
Seeing the rampant and shameless corruption in the current government and its parastatals, why should one think that is would have been different in UCB or others.
The bar should be set high such that the local banks that get through are proud to have earned it, rather than set to low and the tax payer would subsidising the incompetencies. In 2008 we saw that even the best of FIs can fail with a week regulatory system, how about in Uganda.
We have seen BOU crack hard on even foreign banks as well, requiring several to raise more capital and closing at least one.
There is definitely a case to be made for increasing accessibility and affordability of credit to local businesses, but lowering bar for local banks or FIs isn’t the solution.
The author forgot one thing-to NAME the FAMILY behind this takeover and they are the House of Rothschild, who are also the founders of ISRAEL, who have done this with every Western country,even and especially the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve in the U.S.
“Know Thy ENEMY”
Look to your Constitution and COMMON LAW for the SOLUTION, because your Constitution is BASED on COMMON LAW and what has been done to Uganda is Legal, by STATUTORY “law” but UNLAWFUL by Common Law
I am not Ugandan although my son and wife are and I wish you the best in overthrowing the STRANGLEHOLD grip which the House of Rothschild has on you, because it also affects your Government, negatively.
I’m Irish,by the way and I use a Pseudonym, for anonymity because I am very involved in Political Activism