Mutebile, who appears to make a U-turn from earlier position that banks can charge borrowers based on their own assessments, says he was disappointed that banks had refused to reduce charges on loans to spur growth.
Mutebile, who was reading the February monetary policy statement on Thursday afternoon, said very few banks have taken his advice but he continues to struggle with most of them so that they can reduce lending rates for Ugandans.
Mbarara Municipality MP Michael Tusiime accused BoU of abdicating its regulatory mandate and handed it to directors of commercial banks to determine the fate of other financial institutions that were in business competition with banks they represent.
Bank of Uganda BoU Governor Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile has said that the central bank has been and continues to persuade commercial banks to lower interest rates. Mutebile says for the last three years BoU has been reducing Central bank Rate CBR but commercial banks have not moved in tandem with central bank in reducing interest rates.
Stanbic Bank Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Mweheire described the results as a solid performance in a challenging but improving economic environment. He said the surge in profit was driven by the Banks support to trade and infrastructure developments with an excess of one trillion Shillings.
A new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC Uganda shows that overall, the banking system is very strong, with bank liquidity and capital buffers well above the minimum requirement.
Talks collapsed on day one of the strike as employees through The National Union of Clerical Commercial Professional and Technical Employees (NUCCPTE) rejected a request for four days by the bank lawyer to scrutinize a letter purportedly written from the Bank of Baroda Head Quarters in Mumbai, India.
There is need for widening the Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) market in order to capture all bank credits as well as all forms of credit ahead of its liberalization in November this year, a CRB expert has said. The Ministry of Finance plans to open the operations of the CRB to more players, breaking the three-year monopoly by Compuscan, a Bank of Uganda mandated firm.
The business community at Bibia, the custom point at the Uganda and Southern Sudan border are demanding that government should quickly help to establish a permanent commercial bank in the area to help promote trade. The nearest commercial banks are in Gulu town, about 150 kilometres away.
