Ugandan businesses find relief in offshore markets

Businesses in Uganda are currently swarming the foreign exchange market and offshore lenders for loans, as interest rates on loans dominated by shillings remain high in a slowing economy.

Small businesses and risky borrowers face rising costs as interest rates rise, but the largest corporations have avoided a hit.

The Bank of Uganda (BoU) 2023 fourth quarter bank lending survey, shows that commercial banks made it more difficult to process loans for the building, mortgage, construction, and real estate sector while making it easier for the other economic sectors.

This as they anticipated an increase in loan defaults in the quarter to September 2023.

Industry players are now reacting to the move by flocking to offshore borrowing due to the alluringly low interest rates that come with it and relaxed regulations, or asset protection. Although offshore institutions can also be used for illicit purposes, they aren’t considered illegal.

“If you borrow in the domestic market, the best you can get is an 18 percent interest rate on loans and yet you can get offshore money at five percent interest rates,” said Mr Lazarus Mugabi, a board member of Association of Real Estate Agents Uganda, adding, “There are some foreign countries where you can source the money at even free rates. Then you come back to the country and you outcompete everybody in the market by pricing your property competitively.”

The decision to raise interest rates through the central bank rate was prompted by an attempt to rein in the out-of-control inflation, which reached highs of 6.3 percent, exceeding the nation’s medium-term target of less than five percent last year.

A perfect storm

According to figures from the BoU, the central bank rate (CBR) increased from 6.5 percent in May 2022 to 10 percent by October of the same year.

Subsequently, interest rates increased, rising from 18.32 percent during that time to as high as 20.24 percent.

The central bank envisaged that a sharp decline in corporate borrowing and consumer spending would result from a sharp increase in interest rates to sharply cool a red-hot economy. Now in the midst of a weak economy, commercial banks are currently under pressure to meet their core capital requirements of Shs150 billion this year. The lenders also have to make provisions for the growing number of non-performing loans.

This is intended by the regulator to protect their operations in economic headwinds.

They are now releasing this pressure by increasing their lending to the government, which is a safer alternative for private borrowers.

This acts as a domino effect, increasing the government’s pressure on the domestic borrowing market.

The government is avoiding borrowing from foreign markets because of high interest rates and strings attached, which poses material default risks as the country is revamping from a slow growth. The slow growth was orchestrated by global supply chain disruptions and elevated inflation that slowed demand.

Borrowing hiccups

In the three months under review, borrowers applied for Shs300 billion more loans, inching Shs8.7 trillion from Shs6 trillion in the previous period. This demonstrated a genuine desire to revitalise their businesses, start new ones and pay off their cash obligations. However, they were met with a lower credit approval rate, which fell by 5.5 percentage points to 58.6 percent.

The central bank said: “The increase in demand was attributed to the building up of inventory to meet the anticipated festive season demand, coupled with the demand from education institutions to meet their working capital and operational needs.”

The BoU official figures showed that the private sector credit on the one hand grew, albeit more slowly, in the manufacturing, agriculture, housing sectors and business services. On the other hand, private sector credit declined primarily in the sectors of trade, transport, communications, and personal loans sectors.

Economists in Uganda contend that while aggregate demand is what propels the economy, its absence can occasionally result in low inflation, which is currently hovering around 2.8 percent due to muted demand.

This, they stress, is a reverse direction of where the economy should be going.

“The question you want to ask yourself is, ‘Do I really want to control inflation by slowing down my growth? This doesn’t mean to let inflation spiral through, but economics is a trade-off with implications,” Mr Fred Muhumuza, an economist, said on Wednesday.

Not good enough?

Uganda employs the majority of its population in agriculture, but is now making strides toward industrialisation. This is in a bid to spur economic growth that will reach a six percent target in 2024 from the current 4.6 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

However, Mr Muhumuza contends that this is insufficient because it does not lessen the burden of unemployment facing the nation even though it is driving economic growth.

According to official data seen by the Makerere University Business School (Mubs) Economic Forum, the nation had about 8,000 industries with 800,000 jobs prior to 2023 closing.

This means each industry averagely provides 100 jobs. This is significantly less than the employment shortage in Uganda, which is home to a rapidly growing young population.

“Private sector salaries average Shs150,000 and those of government average Shs500,000. Those are not going to drive demand for local industries like Fine Spinners to set up a factory that is going to produce 20,000 shirts per week if it is to succeed. So you can only look into the demand abroad,” Dr Muhumuza explained.

Based on data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBbos), the country’s demographic dividend poses a threat to its businesses due to the declining aggregate demand locally.

Specifically, 78 percent of the population is under 30 years old, and 41 percent survive in poverty.

“With these very low salaries, Uganda cannot sustain industrialisation because the local industries are being outcompeted by the cheaper imported substitutes. A strong shilling (which the government prides itself with in each state of the economy review) is not good in these moments. Kenya’s shilling has lost value but several traders who would have been buying from manufacturers in Uganda are now buying dollars here and crossing to Kenya after converting it to Kenya’s weaker shilling and ultimately get so many Kenyan shillings to bring goods here and sell. Remember they are tax free. Imports from Tanzania are also increasing. Manufacturers have told me that some 15 local big manufacturers have shifted from Uganda to Tanzania,” Mr Muhumuza said.

He added that this has now prompted Ugandans to invest their money in government papers, which neither creates jobs nor wealth for the economy.

“But [the treasury bills and bonds] create [wealth] for that particular individual who has invested, which puts the country into a debt trap. From October, our borrowing, which was around Shs5.41 trillion, saw us pay a debt of Shs3.3 trillion, leaving us with Shs2 trillion for service delivery. September was worse: we borrowed Shs1.2 trillion but only remained with Shs12 billion to provide services. To change those fundamentals to get the economy on the pace of growth, [the] government needs to cut its appetite for money,” he said.

The private sector storming the foreign currency denominated loans in addition to the government borrowing to finance its deficit national budgets in foreign currency as well, has consequently reduced the dollars from the domestic lenders.

The net effect of this is increased uptake of loans from offshore markets.

The government has serviced loans using close to $1 billion every year for the past two years, which is expected to rise even more in the next two years, according to Mr Michael Atingi-Ego, a Ugandan economist and the deputy governor of Uganda’s central bank.

“Ultimately, this has reduced the country’s foreign exchange reserves from $4.5 billion by June 2022 to now $3.9 billion. We are now trying to reduce this drop by limiting our intervention in the forex exchange market where we used to intervene quite significantly in the past,” said the BoU deputy governor.

Depreciating shilling

Recent data released by the Bank of Uganda (BoU) indicates that the growth of private sector credit has drastically decreased to levels that are unprecedented in history. This notwithstanding that private sector credit specifically grew by 7.8 percent during the three months leading up to October 2023.

All of this has led to a new trend of increasing loans dominated by foreign currencies of 3.3 percent from a contraction of 2.1 percent during the same previous period. The central bank attributes this development to the depreciating shilling.

Subsequently, a rise in loans that were dominated by shillings of 1.8 percent to 9.6 percent was observed during the same period. In the quarter to November 2023, the Ugandan shilling remained relatively stable with a marginal two percent depreciation to a mid-rate of Shs3,782. This was, however, a 1.2 percent strength compared to the prior quarter.

“The losses sustained by the shilling during the quarter were largely due to higher corporate demand, mainly from the oil, telecommunication, and manufacturing firms amid continued outflow of portfolio capital and bearish sentiments over the expected outflows from proceeds of the Airtel Initial Public Offer (IPO),” BoU noted in a statement.