How Uganda escaped from financial grey list
Established in 1989, the Financial Action Task Force is an inter-governmental body that combats money laundering and terrorist financing.
KAMPALA | In 2022 as world battled the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, the Financial Action Task Force ( FATF) put Uganda among other countries on the grey list.
Established in 1989, the Financial Action Task Force is an inter-governmental body that combats money laundering and terrorist financing.
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The organisation said Uganda didn’t have adequate capabilities of monitoring money laundering, terrorism monies, terrorism funding and proliferation of small arms.
This meant that Uganda would face enhanced monitoring by the entire global system.
There has thus been extra scrutiny of whatever was being done from bank transactions, to borrowing, to payments among others some of which were uncomfortable and inconveniencing for both government and individuals.
“FATF was even threatening to put us on a black list meaning being locked out of the global economic system,” Ramathan Ggoobi, the permanent secretary and secretary to the treasury, says.
Asked what the government did to escape the grey list, Ggoobi said: "Human beings essentially respond to two things, Incentive and threat or danger."
This was the approach used for the various sectors/agencies of the economy lest they were to risk losing their budgets.
Ggoobi says agencies like banks, police, judiciary among others were all tasked to implement given criteria to ensure Uganda got off the grey list, aspects whose details the PSST was mute about.
He says there were 14 areas that had to be addressed which within 1 year had been cut by half and the rest were dealt with later.
The FATF team were earlier in the year in the country to carry on their supervision of the entities and what was required and when the board sat early February, they announced Uganda was off the Grey list on February 23.
“This now means that Uganda is now back to freedom of doing business without excessive monitoring, will improve investor confidence, we now have the opportunity to on top of attracting investment, to have our financial sector deepen," Ggoobi reiterated.
