General Salim Saleh, the National Coordinator for Operation Wealth Creation has commended Stanbic Bank for easing the process for SACCOs and Ugandans to access business financing.
While speaking at Speaking at the launch event for the Stanbic SACCO offering in northern Uganda that happened Friday at Kawunda Ground, Layibi Division in Gulu, Gen Saleh said that one of the challenges that the business community in Uganda face is lack of access to affordable and favorable financing, which will be addressed with such financial products.
“It is commendable that Uganda’s largest bank is coming off its high-horse to partner with local saccos. Normally, an individual or a SACCO would have to provide a stream of documents to even access one million in a commercial bank, with this new Sacco, offering, you have made borrowing easy for Saccos and our farmers. Your efforts, combined with the government efforts and programs like the parish model, operation wealth creating, NAADS, we will be able to help our farmers to grow and start earning,” he said
General Saleh also noted that one of the challenges that government is facing is not being unable to control and align all its projects so that they support each other.
“In the coming year, government will invest 1 trillion shillings in wealth creation, this money should be used to support past developments that are already happening under all the other government projects, all these projects should be
Stanbic Bank Uganda has announced a new value proposition aimed at boosting the operations for Savings and Credit Cooperative Organizations (SACCOs) and Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) in Northern Uganda.
Speaking at the same event, Anne Juuko, the Stanbic Bank Chief Executive said, “We are very excited to be launching a product that will have actual impact in the lives of our people on the ground. What we seek to do in this new SACCOs offering is to share our years of expertise and build capacity of the SACCOs to operate at the same level of excellence and in a modern manner as a bank. In addition to giving them loans at affordable interest, we will also train them to use our online platforms like Flexipay so that they can handle their finances better. They will also benefit from insurance packages that we are offering as a bank.”
The latest offering is intended to support SACCOs and VSLAs with accessible and affordable financing so they could lend to their members at a low interest rate but also build their digital capacity to serve their members better.
Beneficiaries will be offered an opportunity to open a SACCO Account which features free cash and cheque deposits, free transfers into the account from members and free cash withdrawals. Other benefits of the account include, free online banking, no monthly management fees, tiered interest paid on balances above UGX10million, financial literacy sessions for both management and selected members, as well as participation in capacity building programmes at the Stanbic Business Incubator.
In addition, the bank is quoting an affordable 10% interest rate for agriculturally based SACCOs and 12.5% for non-agricultural SACCOs, an unsecured term loan of up to UGX200million with a tenor of not more than 12 months. The other option is a secured term loan of up to UGX1.5billion with a tenor of between 12 and 36 months maximum.
She said, “Stanbic bank has put a side 50billion shillings for Gulu saccos alone for the next 12 months. However, this money is not a gift and will only be given to qualifying Saccos. Our new proposition shows the bank’s unwavering commitment to supporting economic growth in the country through supporting various critical sectors like agriculture which are crucial for job creation and income generation,’ She said.
The bank is reaching out to SACCOs registered by the Ministry of Trade Industry and Cooperatives as well as VSLAs regulated by the Ministry of Labour and Gender.
The Woman Member of Parliament, Gulu City, Betty Aol Ochan urged business owners to not opt for unregulated money lender who offer financial bailouts on very unfair and unrealistic terms and end up confiscating their properties.
“Some money lenders are lending money at 10% interest rate per month and some people thing it is small but if you are paying for a month, you have paid an interest of 120%. No business can survive at such a rate. However, their government and private microfinance centers and banks that borrow at as low as 10% per annum, it SACCOs are one of the major avenues through which common Ugandans/farmers who are the majority of the country’s productive population can pull efforts together to address challenges that currently affect agriculture in Uganda,” she said.
Gulu city Lord Mayor, Okwonga Alfred noted, “We have a problem in business leadership. We need exposure to train our business in agro-processing so that they can be able to export and broaden their businesses and create more jobs.
The launch event was held under the theme ‘deepening Uganda’s Financial Inclusion and wealth creation through enabling access to affordable credit and capacity building of SACCOS.’ It was attended by slightly over 300 guests including local SACCOs that are currently working with Stanbic Bank Uganda to serve the financial needs of their members.