Once Motivated, Involved, Inspired And Now Moving Forward.

Stanbic Bank has adopted "Moving Forward" as its new tagline. Mr Philip Odera, the managing director, spoke to Business Power's Frederick Masiga and Peter Nyanzi about the bank's future plans.

You are dropping, "Inspired, Motivated, and Involved" and adopting "Moving Forward." Why and what are you moving to?

The entire Standard Bank Group has now changed to "Moving Forward." The reason is that globally, the times have changed socially, culturally and economically. So we are keeping up with the times. Also, "Inspired, Motivated, Involved" was largely about us internally as the staff. 'Moving forward' is driven to our external stakeholders. The idea is, what is it that we should be doing for our external stakeholders to take them forward? So 'Moving Forward' is more of futuristic and fresh and in keeping with the times.

Moving forward, what is your outlook on the future economic situation in this economy?

It is important not to look at Uganda in isolation but as a player on the global stage. If we consider what has happened over the last 18 months, a housing crisis in the US became a credit crisis, then a global economic crisis and eventually a recessionary environment around the world. Well, some countries such as Japan and the US are beginning to pick up as well as some other countries. That can only be good for Uganda because we rely quite heavily on soft commodities such as cocoa, tea and coffee that are exported to those countries. There are some clear signs that countries in Europe are also beginning to pick up. That can only be good news for Uganda. It means that as they continue to pick up, our economy will also pick up since we will get the kind of inflows that will sustain our economy. I therefore see 2010 as a better year for Uganda. And it also means Stanbic Bank should be in a better position to help our customers move forward.

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