Knock off two zeroes from the Uganda shilling

At independence, the East African – and subsequently the Ugandan – shilling stood at seven to the US dollar; 20 to the UK pound.
After more than 50 years, where one pound bought almost three US dollars, you now collect less than one-and-a-half dollars at the foreign exchange counter.
Cycles of industrial labour turmoil, socio-economic policy shifts, inflation, the decline in British manufacturing and the rise of Japanese, Chinese and other Far Eastern mass production lines; all these things have affected the pound. But that is their story. We have our story.

Last Sunday, for this column, I wrote (not drew) a ‘cartoon’ of a fairly tall man standing in the middle of a Pioneer bus. With all the seats removed, bundles of Uganda’s Shs10,000 notes were neatly stacked around the man. At Shs65 billion, the pile covering the entire bus floor had reached the man’s shoulders, filling three-quarters of the bus.
I am told that Internet and social media devotees circulated that article several times. Thank you very much.
Anyway, if the British pound has lost more than half of its value against the dollar during 50 years, the Ugandan shilling has lost its value by hundreds of times.

Our undemocratic ways, a series of dictatorships, costly violent internal conflicts and policing, failed economic policies, horrendous corruption and the rise of the vampire state, extremely low industrial productivity in a global market dominated by processed and manufactured products; these things have in 50 years contributed to the poor economic condition reflected by the Uganda shilling.

At the time Gen Museveni seized power in 1986, the shilling was an Amin and Obote-soiled embarrassment. If I recall, you paid between Shs5,000 and Shs7,000 for one dollar on the black market.
The official Bank of Uganda exchange rate was a value fiction exploited by politicians, senior government officials and connected businessmen, who enjoyed First World shopping and other travel experiences abroad, or reaped huge currency exchange and other business profits at home. Uganda’s peasants and other slaves paid the ‘subsidy’.
In big transactions, the figures involved were unwieldy. Some pocket calculators could not cope.

The new regime had disrupted economic activity and broken into banks and/or cooperative societies during its fighting days. It had thus also contributed to the fate of the shilling. Now it decided to restore some respect to the currency.
As the expression goes, the government “knocked off” two zeros.
Furthermore, whether it was a tax, a collective punishment or naked theft, the government took 30 per cent of all the money exchanged at the banks.

After this measure, plus the removal of two Bank of Uganda exchange rates, the shilling started a new life at around 70 to the dollar.
But the shilling must be a traitor, with no respect for Bush War heroes. Heading for Shs4,000 to the dollar now, the embarrassment is on the wall.

Not sometimes, but daily, government officials and our media people are getting conversion and other financial figures wrong, just because they have so many digits.
I am sure some of Mr Museveni’s ministers cannot write down twenty-something trillion (last year’s Budget) with the right number of zeroes.

Government expenditure and the figures of corruption, now routinely in billions, cannot be properly internalised by our people, which is an indirect way of disenfranchising them.
Why not knock off two zeroes again, but this time without stealing 30 or even one per cent? It will not improve our economy by an iota, but it will make figures more comprehensible.