Finance Minister Kasaija (L) appearing before MPs on Parliament’s Trade and Tourism Committee
The Minister of Finance, Matia Kasaija has urged owners of private schools that are losing their schools to bank loans to sell part of their assets and repay the loans.
Kasaija made the remarks while speaking to journalists after interfacing with Parliament’s Trade and Tourism Committee that is investigating the effect of the second lockdown on their businesses.
Asked what plans Government has for school owners who risk losing their schools after failing to pay loans, Kasaija said he has no powers to demand commercial banks to reschedule their loans but the school owners must consider selling off some of their assets to save their schools because making losses is part of business.
“For owners of private teachers, I don’t have any solution for them because I don’t have enough money to do what the country wants me to do. If you have another property, sell that property save your school. If you don’t have another property, go to your bank and negotiate, but if you went and borrowed from money lenders, those ones I don’t control them,” Kasaija said.
He added: “I am giving them advise, if they have any other assets, let them see them so that the money from the other assets to save the schools instead of losing everything. But to say that each time you have a problem, Government should come to your aid, it won’t be possible.”
For the private school teachers, Kasaija said they will be considered among the vulnerable groups but isn’t sure if the money the Finance Ministry allocated to teachers in the first lockdown reached the intended beneficiaries.
“For the teachers, we took them as vulnerable and we sent them money but I don’t know if they received the money or not. I don’t know if we shall open fully for people to go back to school, that is a question mark. Don’t look at Government because I don’t have the money,” said Kasaija.
Minister Kasaija extended the same caution to traders saying although accumulating debts isn’t a crime, he can’t tell the banks where they borrowed the money from to forgive them, because the banks will tell me to give them money.
“In the first lockdown there was restructuring but I am being told that the restructuring has become a burden,” the Minister said, adding: “The Committee has told me to form a Fund to form traders, but how many funds am I going to form? I am appealing to commercial banks, look at their customers one by one, those you believe will wake up, please forgive them.”
The Quarterly Financial Stability Review December 2020 Report by Bank of Uganda released in March 2021 indicated that between April 2020 and December 2020, borrowers applied for a cumulative total credit relief of Shs7.9Trn of which Sh7.7Trn was granted by banking institutions, translating to an acceptance rate of 97.6 percent.
