By Ben ssebuguzi
On Thursday, April 19,2018 in the New vision newspaper, Mr. Wilbrod Humphrey Owor, the CEO of UBA exonerated Bank of Uganda (BoU) takeover of Crane bank (CB), which many of us did not expect him to show sides since CB was a reliable member of the Association hence showing conflict of interest.
His article went ahead to tell all sundry how CB takeover was strengthening the financial sector (sic).
Mr. Owar made these statements without even waiting for any report about the dissolution of his member. Now, the Auditor General report about BoU has fully exposed the Association to shame! The report states that BoU did not follow right procedures in CB sale! Isn’t that double standards!?
According to National Inclusion Strategy by BoU and finance ministry seeks among other things to extend banking services and bring on board the bigger proportion of the 58% of Ugandan population who are unbanked according to Financial Sector Deepening Uganda facts.
If UBA celebrated the closure of CB by BoU which had 58 branches, then UBA is incompetent and narrow minded.
Much as we are all against measures that undermine the confidence of the banking sector, but UBA has no locus to comment about the same because when the former Crane Bank was facing the same challenge in 2016 before BoU takeover, UBA was mute hence exhibiting double standards.
For us as Youth Power Research Uganda, we already informed the President that for us we are on the side of investors, but not evil people and that’s why Mr. Rajiv can’t be intimidated because he is claiming what belongs to him as Ruparelia group!
You can’t just sell your friends bank at just a paltry of just Ugx 200bn without even first evaluating the Assets of the bank and it’s liabilities!
Bank of Uganda can’t allow the buyer set a price of 200b when the bank assets were a whopping of Ugx 1.8 trillion. This recklessness of BoU needs to be punished by our dear President because it threatens investors confidence.
Much as we think That the third party (buyer) is innocent but somehow is also culpable. You can’t buy a stolen thing because that is a criminal case.
We therefore call upon BoU to swallow humble pie and pay the investor what belongs to him or else our President should intervene and arbitrate between them so that the investors is compensated in order to prevent spill over effects.
In a nutshell therefore, we don’t condone anything that threatens the strength of our banks but we call upon BoU to sort out this mess because it is threatening the proper functionality of the third party yet they are innocent and doing a good job. UBA should also keep quite!.
Ssebuguzi is team Leader Youth Power Research Uganda
