MPs demand list of Emyooga beneficiaries

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KAMPALA - The Parliament Public Accounts Committee tasked the Micro Finance Support to produce a list of all the beneficiaries of Emyooga funds in 2022/23 Financial year with details on how much was loaned and how much has been recovered after the Auditor General (AG) revealed that over 70% of the loans given out have not been recovered by the agency.

This was after the Committee on Monday, June 17, 2024, was yet again forced to call off the meeting, upon realizing that the documents submitted to the Committee fell short of the information the MPs needed.

MP Susan Amero (Amuria) raised suspicion about the nature of information provided pointing out that some SACCOs had district areas of origin labeled as Gulu/Lira, wondering if such SACCOs operate in two districts.

“What is difficult with disaggregating because we want the one which is in the financial year in question? So, if you know it is cumulative, why didn’t you give us the portion that we are interested in? Why are you giving us all because this is quite confusing, you are trying to divert our attention from what we are interested in?” Amero asked.

John Mwebembezi, the Head Finance at Microfinance Support Centre informed the Committee that the money available for Emyooga funds was sh152.7 billion including the sh100 billion and money carried forward and the agency disbursed sh70.71 billion and agreed to provide a detailed list of the beneficiaries.

“It isn’t asking for too much of course as we keep on coming, we note that MPs require additional information to understand this, not that we intend not to bring but MPs find themselves needing more, I think that is why it is back and forth because to understand more, the MPs need to go into deep portfolio analysis to understand the entire portfolio and initially, that isn’t what we understood, but now we understand that MPs require more information to internalize and we are on the same page,” Mwebembezi submitted.

Presenting the budget last week, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said as of June 2023, government had cumulatively disbursed seed capital worth sh261 billion and SACCOs had mobilized sh81.2 billion.

3,584 Emyooga SACCOs had conducted audits for the years 2021 and 2022 and had scheduled annual general meetings.

As of December 2023, 7,049 Emyooga SACCOs had been formed. There were 283,938 female active borrowers, 140,074 youth active borrowers, and 29,081 PWD active borrowers.

A total of 366 Emyooga SACCOs had been submitted to the registrar of cooperatives for permanent registration assessment and of these, 189 certificates were issued by the registrar by the end of the FY2022/2023.

A total of 6,797 SACCO leaders were trained. The training covered cooperative governance, credit and delinquency management, resource mobilization, enterprise selection, and mindset change.

At least 4 Sub-regional forums had been formed as of June 2023 and their rationale is to form and constitute the national forum. Kigezi, Ankole, Lango and Bunyoro sub-regions have formed their forums.

91 Emyooga SACCOs invested in acquiring assets and projects such as taxis, boda bodas, sound systems, boats, wine processing equipment, outside catering, poultry farming, and tree planting.