Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) has resolved to go ahead with their 3 day strike starting today over high interest rates on bank loans.
\nThis is after KACITA leadership snubbed a meeting called by the Prime minister last evening to try and avert the strike.
\nThe leaders said the meeting would not be of any help since government had showed no commitment to intervene positively in the matter.
\nKACITA chairperson Everest Kayondo and spokesperson Issa Ssekitto said they would not attend the meeting at Postal Building since they wanted action, not \u201cempty promises.
\nOnly the organization\u2019s chief executive officer Moses Kalule, put in a token appearance and insisted after the meeting ended at 8:30 pm that the traders\u2019 strike was still on.
\nThe meeting chaired by State Minister for Finance (General Duties), Fred Omach, was attended by State Minister for Trade David Wakikona, the Governor Bank of Uganda, Prof. Tumusiime Mutebile, Private Sector Foundation boss, Moses Ogwal and bankers.
\nThe Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi, who joined in much later, told journalists, who were initially denied access, to the meeting, that there was a proposal to review accounts of borrowers by extending the period of recovery of the loans but not reducing the interest rates.
\nBankers\u2019 representatives meanwhile, handed the baton to the Central Bank, saying they were ready to decrease interest rates if it agrees to reduce the Central Bank Rate which is currently 23 per cent.
\nBut BoU insisted that they cannot reduce the CBR abruptly as it is helping to reduce the country\u2019s inflation rate, which is hovering at 27%.
\nSo far, the traders have been joined by manufacturers, the private sector, teachers and now Makerere University staff all of whom are protesting the increased interest rates on old loans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) has resolved to go ahead with their 3 day strike starting today over high interest rates on bank loans. This is after KACITA leadership snubbed a meeting called by the Prime minister last evening to try and avert the strike. The leaders said the meeting would not be of any help since government had showed no commitment to intervene positively in the matter. KACITA chairperson Everest Kayondo and spokesperson Issa Ssekitto said they would not attend the meeting at Postal Building since they wanted action, not \u201cempty promises. Only the organization\u2019s chief executive officer Moses Kalule, put in a token appearance and insisted after the meeting ended at 8:30 pm that the traders\u2019 strike was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}