The Forum for Democratic change (FDC) has eulogized the governor of Bank of Uganda (BoU) Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile who passed on yesterday.
The Central Bank Governor died yesterday at Aga Khan Hospital where he was admitted over diabetes-related complications. Eagle Online exclusively reported on January 4, 2022 that the economist was admitted to the Kenyan Health facility after he collapsed on 31st December 2021.
His death in Nairobi speaks volume about the ailing health facilities in the country. Speaking earlier today, the Party President Patrick Oboi Amuriat said Mutebile did not have to die in office because has been unwell for a number of years and ought to have vacated office.
“We believe Mutebile was held hostage by Mr. Museveni and struggled throughout his tenure at BoU to stabilize the shilling he undermined by printing extra money to sustain the regime. Because of the over-hatching influence of the regime on the bank of Uganda, the economy is on drip,” Amuriat said.
As a central bank governor, the former legislator said he was the regime’s principal economic advisor and he takes a big share of the blame for its failed economic policies. He said BoU was turned into a Museveni wallet. Remember the first Shs 19 billion bailout to Hassan Bassajjabalaba, NRM Chairman for entrepreneur’s league then and the Shs 142 billion fictitious compensation to the same man.
Mutebile has been on and off duty over the deteriorating health conditions. He was put on daily dialysis because his kidneys had weakened and they couldn’t do their excretion job. He was in September last year admitted at Nakasero hospital for a full week. He was later discharged and continued to be monitored from his Kololo based home. He was admitted to Cleveland hospital in Abu-Dhabi till December when he was discharged.
The 72 year old, whose contract was renewed on January 12th, 2021 for five years, has been at the helm of the central bank since 2001. He is the longest serving Chief Executive in the Bank of Uganda’s history. He is credited with many of the sound economic policies adopted by the Uganda government at the urging of the central bank during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s.
Amidst Covid-19 pandemic Mutebile and his team have kept Uganda’s economy generally stable. Inflation has been contained within the BOU target of 5% and the Shilling has remained stable against major currencies.
Mutebile was born on January 27 1949 in Kabale district Kigezi sub-region. He attended Kigezi College Butobere for his O-Level studies and then went to Makerere College School for his A-Level studies.
In 1970, he enrolled at Makerere University to study economics, where he was elected president of the university Students’ Guild.
He was forced to flee Uganda in 1972 after he gave a speech publicly criticizing the expulsion of Asians from the country by President Idi Amin; he fled to England and was able to finish his studies at Durham University graduating with an upper-second in Economics and Politics. In October 1974, he began his post-graduate studies at Balliol College, Oxford.
He returned to East Africa to Tanzania at the University of Dar es Salaam to lecture and conduct research while pursuing his doctorate in economics.
Between the year 1979 and 1984, Tumusiime-Mutebile was appointed to several government positions in Uganda ranging from Deputy Principal Secretary to the President at State House in 1979, to Undersecretary in the Ministry of Planning in 1981 where he rose to Senior Economist and then Chief Economist in 1984. In 1992, he was appointed Permanent Secretary to the newly combined Ministry of Finance Planning & Economic Development, a merger that he had advocated while working under Minister of Finance Gerald Ssendaula.
