MBARARA CITY, March 15, 2024 – The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives [MTIC] has launched a digital platform dubbed ‘The Cooperatives Registry Management Information System [CRMIS]’ to fast-track the registration of cooperatives in Uganda.
According to Geraldine Ssali Busuulwa, Permanent Secretary MTIC, the web-based system offers benefits such as: Time and cost saving, short turnaround times for certificate issuance, verifications and searches, application tracking and search is possible, authentic and unique identification of cooperatives with no possibility of duplication or forgery, and e-payments option such as use of mobile money and Visa cards.
“The system has been possible with support from USAID, Feed the Future, Uganda Institutional and Systems Strengthening [ISS] Activity,” Ssali said.
While launching the new system at Ankole Mall in Mbarara, Ssali said it will do away with the irregularities that were cited during the registration and tracking of cooperatives in Uganda.
According to Ssali, new system is part of the national vision 2040 which stipulates that ICT has enormous opportunities that Uganda can exploit to transform the economy among others through automation of government processes as well as development of platforms in which the private sector can work with the government to offer new value-added services to the public.
She said the digital platform will serve about 15 million people tracing the kind of businesses they do in the country’s cooperative movement.
“We have managed to digitise all the 44,495 records in the registry and all those are the cooperatives including Emyooga and other cooperatives from the different sectors including transport, agriculture…,” she said.
“We shall be able to match the markets of all the MoUs that we keep signing and we match them to the producers under cooperatives and any other government initiatives deployed on the ground” she said, adding that there will be visibility of the numbers both on the supply and demand chain.
She said that the e-registry system will address issues of fraud that have been going in the cooperative movement.
“There will be no duplication of registration numbers of the cooperatives and no more forgeries because this system is built with a cross validation and data validation interventions with other government agencies like NIRA,” Ssali said.
“We call upon all the cooperators and their administrators to come up and get their password credentials to be able to login because we have to do verification to ensure safety because cyber security is paramount for all our records and transactions,” she said.
She added that the system is going to prepare the cooperatives for the ownership of the upcoming financial support.
“In the pipeline we have the cooperative bank which we would like to bring back into operation, but there is no way we can access credit services in a meaningful manner if we are not an organised sector,” she said, adding that the warehouse receipting system is also going to be very important in regulating the price stabilisation.
On his part, Alex Asiimwe, Chairman Mbarara Grape Farmers Cooperative Society Limited thanked MTIC for coming up with an innovation, saying that it saves transport costs and time since it does not require officials to travel to register their cooperatives.
“Take for instance the time and money we have been spending going to Kampala to file returns and submitting AGM minutes but going forward, all this will be covered by the cooperative registry system which was tested in our presence,” Asiimwe explained.
On his part, Francis Mwebesa, the Minister of Trade, industry and Cooperatives said the cooperative movement is a key driver in the economic development, thus appealing the public to embrace poverty eradication initiatives.
“Statistics in the ministry [MTIC] indicate that there has been tremendous increase in the number of cooperatives and we now have over 45,000 registered cooperatives which are diversified in various sectors of the economy to promote democratic, accountable, and transparent governance, and efficient management,” Mwebesa noted.
The minister also said the digital registration system is intended to simplify services offered by MTIC, and ensure efficiency.
Meanwhile, Claire Kashaija, one of the cooperators in Ankole, appealed to the government to extend electricity and internet cables in villages to enable rural based cooperatives to utilise the new system.
“Majority of our cooperatives are rural based and you are telling them to go digital when actually power and internet access is a struggle. So let government first extend power and internet to the rural areas and also support some of these cooperatives with computers before talking about e-system” Kashaija,” said.
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