Museveni picks fired DFCU boss for UNOC board chair job

President Yoweri Museveni has picked fired Managing Director of Dfcu Bank, Mathias Katamba as board chairperson of Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) replacing businessman Emmanuel Katongole.

Other board members include Justine Isenyi, who currently works in the vice president’s office; Moses Kabanda, the acting commissioner for public administration at the Ministry of Finance; Herbert Mugizi, a principal engineer at the Ministry of Energy; Dr. Iva Lule, a chemical engineer; and Zulika Mirembe, a lawyer.

UNOC, a limited liability company owned by the Government of Uganda, is charged with handling Uganda’s commercial interests in the petroleum sector and ensuring that the resource is exploited sustainably.

Katamba joined DFCU Bank in 2018, succeeding controversial Juma Kisaame.

He left in January last year.

According to sources, one of the tasks at hand was to increase profits for the bank but he instead did the opposite in the five years he was in charge and the board could not tolerate him anymore.

What brought that? We are told that under Katamba the bank embarked on monetary contractions to reduce bank credit supply, tightening loan volume and interest rates. Resultantly, loan conditions were too stringent to the extent of almost asking a customer to come with his/her kids. According to insiders, most customers have left the bank in the last five years on account of not getting required loans. The Katamba led administration was to blame and he had to pay the price.

Katamba also came in at a time when DFCU had just acquired defunct Crane bank. The move proved profitable. The bank’s Crane bank acquisition boosted its profitability in 2017 with net profit nearly tripling to Shs127billion, up from Shs46.27billion in 2016 and Shs 37billion in 2015. The board expected Katamba to maintain this trend but he did not. Instead that was the last time DFCU saw some profits.

Katamba led management also had a task to ensure DFCU consolidated all Crane bank clients. This was reportedly not the case. These were used to quick business loans given on account of transaction history, trust etc. The Katamba led administration did not read the weather well and instead all these loan conditions were removed. Clients had to run away. Instead of consolidating the former Crane bank staff who had good relations with their now transferred clients, the original DFCU staff were looking at them with one eye. The customers had to run away.

The bulk of Crane bank customers of Indian descent had to run away to Bank of India, Baroda and other ‘friendly’ banks and this spelt doom for Katamba. He had to pay the price.

Internally, we are told teams especially in credit could not approve most loans and this meant that sales teams wouldn’t earn bonus and most of them quit.

Under the Katamba led administration, the bank suffered many scandals.

Apart from intrigue and sex scandals, there are also those to do with in-house fraud.

All these worked against Katamba and could not steer the bank to profitability.

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