Standing on established protocol, good morning to you all.
Thank you to the Chairman of the Uganda Bankers' Association, Mr Michael Mugabi, and the Executive Director, Mr Wilbrod Owor, for the honour of opening this ninth edition of the Annual Bankers' Conference.
I want to begin with a number, because numbers have a way of focusing the mind.
Fifty billion dollars. That is the size of the Ugandan economy on which this Tenfold Growth Strategy was built. Five hundred billion dollars. That is where this nation has resolved to be by 2040. A tenfold expansion within a single generation.
When the history of Uganda's transformation is written, the question will not be whether the ambition was grand. It plainly is. The question will be whether the institutions in this room rose to meet it.
That question is yours to answer, and my purpose this morning is to tell you, clearly and without ambiguity, that the time to answer it is now.
The Foundation: Stability Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling
Transformation cannot occur without a stable macroeconomic environment. Investors require confidence. Households require assurance that the value of their savings will be preserved. And financial institutions require stability to mobilise resources and finance the long term.
On that front, we have delivered. Despite the recent rise due to external factors, over the twelve months to July, headline and core inflation averaged 3.3 percent, comfortably below our medium-term target of 5 percent amid real geopolitical and global trade uncertainty. Real GDP growth reached 6.4 percent in FY2025/26, broad-based across agriculture, industry and services. Your own sector is sound: private sector credit grew 16.1 percent in the year to June, while non-performing loans fell to 2.67 percent, their lowest level since 2011.
These are good numbers. But let me be direct, as a friend of this industry should be: they are the beginning of the work, not the end of it. The foundation is laid. The building has not yet begun.
The Opportunity: Four Doors, and the Pillar Beneath Them
Finance is the circulatory system of this economy. Consider the four doors before you.
In agro-industrialisation, Uganda already earns from what it grows; tenfold growth requires earning from what it processes, through storage, value addition and export logistics across the value chain. In tourism, our hospitality and transport infrastructure remain underfinanced relative to their promise, across the blue, green and brown economy. In minerals, including an oil and gas sector now approaching commercial production, the opportunity is patient, structured finance that moves beyond the ordinary commercial loan. And in science, technology and innovation, the challenge is different again. These are enterprises whose real assets are cash flows and ideas rather than land titles. They will need cash-flow lending, venture debt and intellectual-property finance, not simply collateral-based models.
Beneath all four sits a fifth: mobilising savings and deepening capital markets, so that tenfold growth does not stand on bank balance sheets alone. Banks cannot, and should not try to, supply this capital single-handedly. Pension funds, insurers, development finance institutions and capital markets must stand beside you as complementary pillars of one financial ecosystem.
This means your institutions must evolve: from lenders to arrangers, from balance-sheet providers to capital-market participants, and from transaction bankers to strategic partners in national development. The institutions in this room that make that shift early will not merely survive this transformation; they will be its principal architects and its principal beneficiaries.
The Ask: From Commitment to Key Result Areas
On 19 February, many of your board chairpersons sat with me over breakfast at the Sheraton, where the Uganda Bankers' Association presented your Comprehensive Response Plan, a commitment to extend some four hundred and ninety trillion shillings in private sector credit by 2040 in support of this strategy. The Bank of Uganda subsequently followed up through a circular requesting every supervised institution to embed the ATMS pillars within its 2026/27 work plans and to submit a Board-approved preparation strategy, complete with measurable performance targets, by early October. That deadline is now weeks away, not months.
As you complete that work, I encourage you to think beyond the credit numbers themselves. Extending UGX 490 trillion in private sector credit is, of course, an asset-side ambition. But every asset must be funded. Every loan requires a liability behind it. Every expansion of lending ultimately requires capital to support it. The real question, therefore, is not simply how much credit the industry intends to create. The real question is how the balance sheet as a whole will grow to support it.
How will deposits grow? How will longer-term funding be mobilised? How will capital keep pace with expanding risk-weighted assets? And what specific initiatives will turn those projections into reality? These are not questions for regulators alone. They are questions for Boards and management teams. They are questions that belong at the heart of the strategies you are now preparing.
Some institutions may find part of the answer in deepening their deposit franchise and reaching new savers through technology and innovation. Others may find it in accessing longer-term funding sources, including sustainable and green finance, where strong environmental, social and governance practices are increasingly becoming a prerequisite for attracting global pools of capital. Others still may need to consider how their capital base will evolve over time through retained earnings, strategic investment, capital-market issuance, or even public listings that provide access to a broader investor base.
My point is simple: the journey to UGX 490 trillion cannot be financed by ambition alone. It must be matched by credible plans for funding, savings mobilisation and capital formation. A commitment that never reaches a balance sheet is only a speech, and I did not come here this morning to give you one more speech to file away.
So I ask you, directly: finish that work, and submit it. Bring specific, measurable key result areas grounded in your own business model. Large banks, let yours speak of syndications, capital-market linkages, funding strategies and capital plans that can support large-scale balance-sheet growth. Tier 2 and Tier 3 institutions, let yours speak of the value chains, communities and depositors only you can reach. Development finance institutions, let yours speak of patient capital that crowds others in. One size fits no one; comparable ambition fits all.
And when your Boards consider these strategies, I encourage them to keep one question firmly in view: How do the numbers in this strategy translate into growth on both sides of the balance sheet, and what concrete initiatives will deliver that growth? The Bank of Uganda will track these submissions through our normal supervisory engagement, and when this conference convenes next year, we will measure delivery, not declarations.
Prudence Is Your Licence, Not Your Leash
Some of you may be wondering whether the regulator approves of this. Let me answer that head-on, because clarity from the central bank is part of what I owe you.
Our prudential framework is not the enemy of your ambition; it is the foundation of it. A bank that takes strategic risk from a position of capital strength and sound risk management is doing exactly what this economy needs. A bank that takes the same risk from weak fundamentals is not financing Uganda's future; it is mortgaging it. Innovation within the framework is expected of you. Recklessness around it will not be tolerated, because no transformation has ever been built on the ruins of its own financial system. You have my word on both counts.
For our part, the Bank of Uganda makes its own commitments. We will keep regulation proportionate and forward-looking, enabling agent banking, digital distribution and responsible product innovation while strengthening cyber resilience. We will strengthen the plumbing of credit, including collateral registries, credit information and sectoral data, so that financing gaps in agriculture, tourism, minerals and innovation are visible and therefore addressable.
We recognise, too, the Uganda Bankers' Association's enabling-environment agenda, including its work on land-based collateral and sector-specific dispute resolution, a cause I have championed personally, including at this year's Judicial Officers' Colloquium on Alternative Dispute Resolution. And beyond any single instrument, the Bank of Uganda commits to something broader still: championing, alongside the Uganda Bankers' Association, a framework that can evolve as circumstances demand, adjust where adjustment is needed, and keep its eyes firmly fixed on the destination throughout.
Closing: Seize the Day
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the horizon of 2040 is not as far away as it looks. It will be reached, or missed, through decisions taken in rooms like this one, in this decade.
The strategy is written. The economy is stable. The sector is sound. What remains is execution: board by board, balance sheet by balance sheet, key result area by key result area.
Uganda's farmers, factories, hotels, mines and innovators are waiting for the capital that only this room can mobilise. The question is no longer whether the sector supports tenfold growth. The question is whether we can convert ambition into funded, capitalised and executable plans that deliver it.
If we do, Uganda's transformation will not be remembered merely as a national aspiration. It will be remembered as a national achievement. Supply the capital, mobilise the savings, strengthen the institutions, and finance the future, prudently, boldly and together. History will then record that when Uganda reached for tenfold growth, her bankers reached with her.
I declare this Ninth Annual Bankers' Conference officially open, and I thank you for your attention. May God bless you all.