Alex Asiimwe, the Chairperson of Mbarara Grapes Farmers Cooperative, praised the transition to a digital system noting that the previous practice of travelling to Kampala to file annual returns and make amendments to the Cooperative By-laws was inconvenient for cooperators.
The Ministry
of Trade, Industry, and Cooperatives has introduced a digital registration
process for credit and savings cooperative societies in the country, a move
that has been welcomed by stakeholders.
The
Cooperatives Registry Management Information System was launched on Thursday,
in Mbarara City.
Mary
Amumpaire Mwesigwa the Head of ICT at the Ministry said that the move marks a
significant shift from manual registration to the use of electronic
registration methods.
She said the
new system ensures that cooperative societies have equitable and timely access
to services such as mobile money payments, e-certification of documents, and
e-reservation of cooperative names noting that the services are now available
along the whole service delivery chain, from registration to management of
cooperative societies at the Ministry.
While
launching the system, Geraldine SSali, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of
Trade Industry and Cooperatives said that the development of the system is in
line with the National Vision 2040 that stipulates ICT as an enormous
opportunity that Uganda can exploit to transform the economy.
She said
that the system will strengthen cooperatives by enhancing their capacity in
group dynamics, entrepreneurship, and value chain activities, particularly
collective marketing.
Alex
Asiimwe, the Chairperson of Mbarara Grapes Farmers Cooperative, praised the
transition to a digital system noting that the previous practice of travelling
to Kampala to file annual returns and make amendments to the Cooperative
By-laws was inconvenient for cooperators.
He added that locating files from the
records manually was tiresome and times-consuming.
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Allan
Mbabazi the head of ICT at Rwanyamahembe SACCO said that it was very costly to
travel to Kampala for the Cooperatives who would spend more than a million
shillings to transact any activity at the ministry.
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lot of cost.”//
However, Claire
Kasheija a cooperator asked Ministry officials and Commercial officers to train
SACCO officials, and board members of cooperatives and also get them computers
and internet gadgets to ease the implementation of the system.
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some extent…
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transition system.”//
Ivan Asiimwe
the Secretary General of Uganda Cooperative Alliance said that the digitalization
of registering cooperatives will make it easy for them to revive the Uganda
Cooperative Bank to enable Ugandans in cooperatives to save more money to
invest in projects to develop themselves.
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be easier.”//
Uganda has a
total of 44,879 cooperatives, including 10,678 SACCOs, 6,880 Emyooga SACCOs,
and 13,159 credit and savings, cooperative societies (SACCOs) among others.
