With the great news of the Final Investment Decision being concluded this week at Kololo Airstrip, we must have already a fully Ugandan-owned Bank in play.
Crane Bank was greatly supportive of small and Middle-sized Ugandan Businesses and Investments. If you ask all Business people in town they will tell you how its closure has greatly affected their businesses.
Unfortunately, some unpatriotic corrupt thugs colluded to kill off this great Bank with a Country wide Network.
This has left Ugandan Businessmen and women exposed and greatly exploited by foreign-owned Banks that repatriate billions back to their countries of origin.
It’s not a secret today that some Banks have different rates for Ugandans and different ones for their Nationals. Ugandans are charged almost double the rates they charge their Nationals.
We literally have almost no real Banks in this Country.
We have a few warehouses well painted and branded with con men seated at the counters robbing our unsuspecting citizens.
No single genuine business can break even or make a profit at the current interest rates charged by most commercial Banks in this Country.
When you compound their interest rates and fees for another instrument like Performance Guarantees ( PG ), Advance Payment Guarantees ( APG), etc with local Taxes you can hardly break even.
If idiots had not killed Crane Bank, it would by now set up branches in East Africa especially in South Sudan and Congo to support our business communities being exploited there as well.
With oil money coming through we must have a fully Ugandan-owned Bank sharing in the spoils otherwise we shall bleed away again.
We have great Ugandan Brains in the Banking and Financial sectors but they are mercenaries for other Banks owned by other Countries.
We should have 75% of all oil revenues and transactions strictly reserved for Ugandan-owned financial institutions.
The time is now to immediately open Crane Bank, recapitalize it, and give it a strong Management team and systems as we bring to books the thugs that killed it in the first place.
We burnt our fingers with the closure of Uganda Commercial Bank ( UCB) we can’t keep making the same mistakes and expect miracles.
Now we are at the mercy of foreign-owned thieving Banks.
Centenary Bank is doing well as a Rural Development Bank especially supporting our farmers. Government should invest in this Bank to also have it go regional and compete with others.
There must be deliberate efforts to spur our local institutions using our oil resources to an international level and push for strict Domestic content involvement across the value chain.
This is the kind of debate we must keep our people engaged in if we are to develop our folks.
Instead, Ugandans prefer to spend valuable time on useless social media talk of Mzee Jemba of ekyase omugenzi fame and chilling with the big boys crap!
Till then my cents!