Kasaija to private schools: "Sell school assets to repay bank loans, government is broke"

The minister for Finance and Economic Development, Matia Kasaija has advised private school owners to sell school assets and repay bank loans instead of asking for government bailouts.

To say this, Kasaija was responding to calls by private school owners, who asked government for a school recovery fund to help them finance loan repayments.

Speaking to journalists outside Parliament on Friday, Kasaija said that government does not have money to bail out schools.

“The only advice I can give school owners as a person who studied business, is that let them sell school assets and repay the loans instead of losing both. This is what they have to do,” Kasaija said.

Kasaija said that he will talk to Bank of Uganda and see if these loans can be rescheduled but there is nothing he can do in the meantime.

"I do not have enough money to do what the country needs me to do. Let them go to banks and talk to them nicely," he said.

Private school owners earlier this week held a press briefing where they said that with the uncertainty of when education institutions will reopen, some banks have already threatened to take on property which they mortgaged as collateral for loans.

These according to their association spokesperson Christopher Kiwanuka, had received loans from commercial banks to renovate and expand their schools, hoping they would recover the loans from students’ fees collection.

The schools, according to Kiwanuka, have now defaulted on repayment since the institutions were closed in June following the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic.