The Emyooga Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations (Saccos) in the nine districts of Greater Masaka have received a total of Shs5.9 billion from the government through the Ministry of Finance.
Mr Haruna Kasolo, the state minister for micro-finance and small enterprises, stated this week that each of the 300 Saccos that submitted accurate books of accounts would receive Shs20 million in supplementary cash, beginning this week.
The second allocation of Emyooga funding was announced in Masaka City over the weekend.
“It was a presidential directive to give more money to Emyooga Saccos, but we are considering only those with active members who are saving and doing business,” he stated.
Mr. Kasolo has stated that the government is committed to transforming 68% of the country’s homesteads from subsistence to market-oriented agriculture through this program.
“With government efforts to financially empower citizens through programmes like Emyooga and Parish Development Model (PDM), it is going to be one’s choice to remain poor in Uganda,” he stated.
To help low-income Ugandans in the informal sector increase household incomes and create small businesses, the government launched the Emyooga programme in July 2020, injecting a whopping Shs260b.
However, in some districts the intended recipients have received the money and used it for gratification, while in others, the implementers of the programme at the districts have swindled a portion of the money.
The intended recipients include boda-boda riders, carpenters, tailors, welders, fishermen, taxi drivers, vendors, and salon operators, among others.
The honeymoon period for the newly appointed Masaka City Resident Commissioner, Mr. Hudu Hussein, has gone, and he has warned Emyooga defaulters that they would be jailed until they repay the money.
If you owe money to Emyooga in order to receive other benefits, you had better pay it back before we come for you.
He emphasized that he was in the country “not for a honeymoon but for business.”
The government initially transferred Shs30m through direct wire to the Sacco account through the primary agency implementing Emyooga, the Micro-Finance Support Centre (MSF), from which member associations borrowed at 8-12 per cent interest for various firms.
To date, Shs231 billion has been disbursed to 6,813 registered Emyooga Saccos. By December of 2021, the center claimed that 594,475 people had benefited from the mobilization of Shs554.3b in savings.
During the initial reimbursement period two years ago, the wider Masaka region, which includes 22 constituencies and 2,090 Saccos at the parish level, got a total of Shs21b as seed money. Every Sacco was given 30 million shillings to use as a common pooling resource.
However, district-level program managers are still fighting an uphill battle to recoup the initial funds loaned to the various recipients in the early phases of the program’s rollout.