Africa-Press – Uganda. A section of farmers have asked Parliament to put in place a legal framework for the establishment of an Agriculture and Cooperative Bank.
Lt (rtd) Moses Mugisha Magufuri Babyomera, the national coordinator of the Agriculture and Cooperative Bank Promoters, said they submitted a petition to Parliament over the need to expedite the process.
“We need a bank that understands the farmer in terms of gestation period. For example, if you go to a bank now and you want a loan to go for coffee which takes around three years, you need a bank that will start asking for loan payment after you have started harvesting,” he said.
“But these commercial banks, they give you money today, the next month they want you to start paying back,” he added.
In a the petition, which this publication has seen, the group said: “Parliament and the Cabinet [should] find it proper to establish an Agriculture and Cooperative Bank for the solidification and consolidation of government initiatives in a sustainable manner by giving legal framework.”
The promoters said in their petition that having this bank in place would address bottlenecks faced in the implementation of interventions such as the Parish Development Model (PDM) and Emyooga Fund.
“…on several occasions, the government has run programmes for the economic empowerment of Uganda spread through different initiatives such the over Shs250 billion Emyooga fund, Shs1.1 trillion for the PDM programme, over Shs200 billion post Covid-19 stimulus funds….scattered capacity building funds being implemented by MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies), as well as Bank of Uganda partnering with implementing commercial banks,” the petition reads in part.
“The ultimate vision and the kind gestures of [the] well-intentioned agenda of government have not come to fruition in a sustainable manner as the Ubos (Uganda Bureau of Statistics) UNHS (Uganda National Household Survey) 2019/2020 report still shows that 3.5 million households (39 percent) of Uganda’s population is still stuck in a subsistence economy with 62 percent of these in subsistence agriculture a sign that the programmes are not yielding as envisaged,” it added.
The petitioners said to ensure sustainability and self-sufficiency, which are key for increasing economic growth, there is need to have a hybrid bank that blends the agricultural need and cooperative objective.
They add that the establishment of an Agriculture and Cooperative Bank is in line with the Cooperative Societies Amendment Act, 2019.
Lt Babyomera said they are yet to get a response from Parliament on the petition which he says was given to the institution in March last year.
Mr Fred Mwesigye, a farmer from Nakaseke District, said the bank would be a big win for farmers.
“We expect the bank to give farmers loans at a low-interest rate. We deserve that kind of bank because the majority of the population is involved in agriculture,” he said.
Cooperative bank
In September last year, the State Minister for Cooperatives, Mr Fredrick Gume Ngobi, said that plans were underway for the government to revive the Uganda Cooperative Bank to enable Ugandans in cooperatives to save more money in order to invest in projects to develop themselves.
“For the first time since our struggle began, the government has accepted that we revive our Cooperative Bank. We have already have it on the Order Paper of Cabinet and it’s only a matter of time that we will be presenting the need for our bank,” he said.
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