Investments expected to expand – Dr Muhumuza
Senior Economist Fred Muhumuza believes this is an opportunity for Uganda to do more scrutiny in tackling shortfalls of money laundering while eyeing the 'White List'.
KAMPALA | Two days after the Financial Action Task Force dropped Uganda from the 'Grey List', global investments into the country are projected to expand three-fold amid reduced cost of doing business.
Senior Economist Fred Muhumuza believes this is an opportunity for Uganda to do more scrutiny in tackling shortfalls of money laundering while eyeing the 'White List'.
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Two days back, the Financial Action Task Force plenary, at its meeting in Paris, reached a conclusion that Uganda has fully implemented its action plan.
The meeting subsequently dropped Uganda from its list of countries under increased monitoring known as a the grey list.
Uganda had been on the unwanted list for the last four years.
This comes at a time when Ugandans living in Europe had started facing difficulties in making transactions in and out because their motherland was considered as a high-risk country.
A country on the list is an indication that the Financial Action Task Force has identified strategic deficiencies in its systems to counter financial crimes.
But while this sounds as good news to Uganda, Muhumuza says there is need to do more scrutiny and tackle short falls in curbing money laundering to avoid delays in concluding business transactions and increase the cost of doing business across.
“Now that we are off the grey list we need to work hard and start eyeing the white list but we already assured of global investments and transactions of business across are likely to improve tremendously,” Muhumuza said.
Muhumuza believes this presents numerous opportunities to Uganda of Global investors doing global transactions with assured safety of their funds with ongoing efforts required to uphold compliance and successfully stop cross-border illicit money activity.
According to the Financial Action Task Force, Uganda made key reforms in multiple areas including adopting a national Anti – money Laundering law, enhancing the use of mutual legal assistance and maintaining statistics and developing while implementing risk based supervision of financial and designated non-financial business sector.
