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The Monitor has established that Malee Sampran, the company President Yoweri Museveni selected to lease Dairy Corporation at $1 for three years, might not be financially viable to carry out the project. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Yet another story of the President getting it wrong on an `investor' and giving away the family silver to somebody who lacks the capacity to make good of it.
These embarrassing so-called investors prove that we have learnt nothing from the shame and scandal that has dogged our divestiture deals over the past few years.
Voices of prudence cried foul in the Apparels Tri-Star financial set-up, with huge government grants and soft loans bestowed on a powerful "investor", who it turned out, depended almost completely on our monies to set up his investment.
Everyone can see how embarrassingly unsuccessful this Tri-Star venture has turned out, even with the President's personal blessing.
The Tri-Star debacle came at the heels of another deal that left Uganda with egg on its face - the sale of Uganda Commercial Bank to Westmontland Bank Asia. In that deal, these serious investors, with special backing from the powers that be, messed up the privatisation process by their inability to pay up. The farce ended when they run out of the country. The list goes on.
It is now time to question why this country has all these many financial experts? We know that the President consults them. Question is what is the quality of the advice they are giving him? Does he follow their advice? Because of the huge monies that the country is losing through imprudent dealings with 'investors', not to mention the loss of face, it is clearly time for the President to get better advice.
In fact, he should hire people he can trust to competently execute dealings with investors without him shoving them off the chair and signing bogus deals. The President has a good hand at macroeconomics and his broad view is invaluable.
But we have suffered so long and so much with these 'investors' that we ought to have learnt something from our mistakes. |