President Yoweri Museveni has Friday joined his voice in the praising the works and contributions of the deceased former Bank of Uganda Governor, Prof Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile who passed away last Sunday.
Museveni hailed the fallen Governor for enriching the economic ideas of the then new NRM government in the 1980s, and helping put Ugandan’s economy back on track.
The President, while speaking at the national morning of Mutebile at Kololo in Kampala, commended the former governor and his team with whom they worked at the time in the Ministry of Finance, for enriching the NRM’s 10-point program with their own capitalistic ideas.
He also revealed that it was Mutebile’s determination and competitiveness that encouraged him to keep in in office as Secretary to the Treasury and later as Governor Bank of Uganda.
Mutebile has been the longest-serving Governor of the Bank of Uganda’s and also Africa’s longest-serving central bank governor at the time of his death.
Speaking during service at Kololo, the late Governor’s Widow Mrs. Betty Mutebile thanked President Museveni for keeping her husband in office for a long time.
“I would like to thank his excellency for the trust and confidence that you put in Emmanuel,” she said.
“I want to thank you for appointing him to serve all these years in spite of all his health issues which I know you are aware of, to the extent that at one time you even surrendered your own plane to take him for treatment. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
In response, Museveni said he decided keep Mutebile around in order to keep the debate and competition alive at the Ministry of Finance the Central Bank.
He revealed that at the time, there were two rival camps at Ministry of Finance, one led by Mutebile which was pro-privatization and one led by Prof Ezra Suruma which was against privatization.
“Mama Betty was thanking me for keeping him in Treasury and the Central Bank. But I liked that civil war of ideas. You had Mutebile with his ideas and then Suruma,” Museveni said.
“They helped me understand better instead of having one way of thinking. I liked it so much. Those meetings were like civil war…and it really helps with competition of ideas.”
According to the President, Prof Mutebile, who at the time was an ardent follower of the World Bank and IMF, fought tooth and nail and managed to convince him to make three key economic reforms.
First, he said. Mutebile and his team correctly advised the government to “stop the economic bleeding” by removing too much money from circulation and avoiding excessive liquidity.
“They told me that if you have too much money chasing too few goods, inflation will come and people we have no confidence to invest,” he said.
Secondly, he said, Mutebile advised government to stop fixing the foreign exchange rate, thereby allowing the Uganda shilling to float and find its own level.
The third piece of advice from Mutebile, Museveni said was to fully liberalise the economy through mass privatization of government assets and parastatals.
But while this worked to some extent, Museveni said Mutebile and his team “made some mistakes” by supporting privatization of the Uganda Commercial Bank.
Although it was hoped that this would lead to reduction of interest rates, Museveni said this has never happened to this date.
On this note, Museveni said he should have listened to Prof Suruma’s side who opposed privatizing UCB.
But nonetheless, Museveni said, Mutebile’s advice helped free up some of the sectors which were controlled by government, such as Transport and Hospitality, allowing the private sector to join in and rapidly expand them.
“When government withdraw, people flocked the sectors, and now you have all these buses, taxis and bodabodas. That was the correct decision.”
The President as such promised to find time and put into writing all of the contributions made by Mutebile and the rest of the old economic experts at the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Uganda, so that “the bazukulu know where to add on.”
Professor Mutebile will be laid to rest this Sunday at his ancestral home in Kabale.
