Over the past few weeks, the commissions commitee of Parliament has been probing how the Cooperative Bank in 1997 was incorporated replacing and taking over assets and liabilities of a previous Bank, incorporated under the Cooperative Societies Act in 1964, under the same name.
Katuntu tasked Wassa to explain how the new cooperative bank came into existence in vain. He asked for more time to produce documents regarding the licensing and establishment of both banks.
Ivan Asiimwe, a former shareholder of Cooperative Bank Limited informed the committee that in 1964 different cooperative unions established the Cooperative Bank under the Cooperative Societies Act and that a second Cooperative Bank was incorporated in 1997 under the Companys Act.
In his report, the Auditor General observed that no asset movement schedule or ledgers indicating assets at closure, assets sold, selling price, a period of sale, assets not sold, performing and nonperforming loans, was provided to support asset movements in the Statement of Affairs of the three closed banks.
Presenting the petition on behalf of the group, Jane Amuge Okello, the Business Development Advisor at Uhuru Institute for Social Development, said the State minister for cooperatives and a department of cooperatives under the trade ministry are not good enough. She said the department of cooperatives is poorly staffed and grossly underfunded, which has led to inefficiency.
