City businessman, Hamis Kiggundu alias Ham has revealed that most of the banks in Uganda favour foreign investors thus leaving their local counterparts to suffer.
Ham made the revelation on Monday while at the Commercial Division of the High Court after the hearing of his Shs120b dispute against Diamond Trust Bank.
Last year the banking sector registered impressive results compared to 2018 despite loss-making banks increasing from five to seven. According to the 2019 financial statements released by banks between March and May 2020, banks became more profitable posting over Shs906.13bn net profit in 2019, up from Shs793.7bn recorded in 2018. The Shs906.13bn was recorded by 18 banks.
However, according to Ham, despite the fact that these banks perform well and made a lot of profits, the citizens of the country enjoy less services from them. He said that when a local person goes for the loan, it may take 1 or 2 months, which is not the case with the foreigners.
“The banks we have here are not loyal to Ugandans, most of them are owned by foreigners such as Indians, Kenyan etc and when an Indian or any foreigner goes for a loan they will work on him as soon as possible, but when an ordinary Ugandan goes for the same loan, they will toss him/ her around and he/she will never get that loan in a period of one month,” he said.
He added that to remove such segregations in Uganda’s banking system, Ugandans must start their banks within their country and stop depending on foreign banks which treat local people in an irresponsible way.
Ham promised that in case he wins the case in which DTB -Uganda, and DTB-Kenya siphoned over sh120 billion from his accounts without his consent. He will start a bank that will be owned by a Ugandan and will treat everyone fairly.
“This is not my money, it’s Uganda’s money. That’s why I call every Ugandan to speak against this scam, this is how foreign banks have treated local people. We need to build our banks if I win this case and they pay back my money I will build a bank owned by a Ugandan,” he said.
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