By Denis Jjuuko
It starts with a newspaper advert placed by a bailiff on behalf of their client, usually a corporate law firm, who is acting on behalf their client, a financial institution. The bailiff lists down the properties complete with photos and the name of the debtor and/or registered proprietor. The bailiffs give a period of usually 30 days upon expiry they would proceed to auction the listed property under the Mortgage Act unless the debtor pays the registered mortgagee.
Some newspapers could be surviving largely on such adverts nowadays. They are littered everywhere. Some are of very cheap battered vehicles among which are TukTuks or three wheelers. The majority of such distressed borrowers don’t make news. Prominence makes news. Not some obscure businessman distributing polythene packaged water on a TukTuk in Kalagi.
The prominent figure, dead or alive, whose properties were advertised is in financial trouble. The bank is tired of begging him to deposit some money on their account so they could pay themselves and have passed on the file to the lawyer who dully instructed his toughest bailiff.
Upon publication, the advert starts flying on social media and discussions ensue in WhatsApp groups. Everyone, including those indebted to mobile money companies, start advancing their theories on why the business has failed to pay their loans. When someone prominent in Uganda is in trouble, nobody watches through the ventilators! Everyone opens their front doors, pulls out a folding chair and sits in the courtyard to discuss this openly.
The debtor, gleefully watching the attention the advert is attracting, calls a press conference. The journalists and editors who previously refused to highlight anything he was doing claiming there was “no news,” now send their award-winning journalists with backpacks containing the latest live streaming gadgets.
The debtor opens the press briefing with a coached statement of how he has been employing thousands of people, how much taxes and NSSF he has been paying and how important his crumbling empire is to the economy. He talks about the unfairness of banks and how the economy can’t grow unless the interest rates are slashed.
Flanked by his lawyer and auditor, he refers back to the pandemic of five years ago, the closure of USAID, and the delay by the government to pay or compensate him. Sometimes all those points are true. Government owes many businesses money. The tax collector, URA, don’t know a thing about helping businesses grow so they can collect more taxes but I digress.
Anyway, after his opening monologue with his lawyer and auditor nodding at every word, he opens up the floor so journalists could ask questions. What is he now going to do? They ask. “I have failed to meet the president,” he says with a straight face. “The people around him are hiding him. If I could meet him, he would bail me out. We have written to him, but he hasn’t responded. He is a good man, we are sure he simply hasn’t yet received our letter,” he says before adding; “I played a key role in the war that brought him to power. I am an ardent supporter of NRM.”
Since the country’s media is now solely focused on his troubles and the president’s social media team is scavenging the internet, they soon bring it to his attention. The president responds to the letter instructing the Prime Minister and/or Minister of Finance to do something.
It seems bailouts have become the biggest business opportunity in Uganda. Construction companies, real estate owners, agricultural produce businesses, people setting up diverse businesses in wheat processing and drug manufacturing, and cultural centres built with donors’ money have all cried for bailouts and many have been bailed out. Upon receiving the bailout, they cry for more bailouts or suppliers take them to court for non-payment.
Others you find them the next day flossing around in the latest Range Rovers, belching on steak from five-star hotels with the brownest bimbos providing company. The other businessmen who were depositing money regularly into their loan bank accounts realize they can also do what the bailed out businessman did. The cycle is becoming endless.
There isn’t much wrong with governments bailing out businesses. The problem is who is bailing out the Kalagi TukTuk water distributor? He is left at the mercy of money lenders, who sell his three-wheeler and send him back to poverty in Galiraaya.
There should be a policy on bailouts and who qualifies for it and it should be open to all including small and micro businesses. It shouldn’t be free money though. Bailed out business should pay back with a little interest so that others could access the funds. That way, everyone gets a chance to grow their businesses on a levelled field.
The writer is a communication and visibility consultant. djjuuko@gmail.com
