NIC risks Losing Licence

The National Insurance Corporation, the fourth largest insurer in the country, is at risk of losing its business licence for failing to submit its audited accounts to the Uganda Insurance Commission, officials said yesterday.

Mr Ibrahim Kaddunabi Lubega, the chief executive officer of the commission said
“The law is very clear. We can suspend them from insurance, we can revoke their licence and we can fine them. We will have to sit and agree,”

Mr Sam Njoroge, NIC’s chief executive officer, said the company will submit the accounts within the set deadline. “All those deadlines will be met,” he said in an interview yesterday.

Mr Lubega was speaking in the aftermath of the suspension of trading of NIC’s shares by the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) last Friday. The Exchange or stock market is where shares of listed companies such as DFCU Limited and Stanbic Bank Uganda are sold.

The USE management had given NIC until July 14 to publish its results but the insurer failed to meet the deadline. The management then suspended the trading of shares on the NIC counter until it publishes its audited accounts according to a notice issued by Mr Joseph Kitamirike, the chief executive officer of the USE, on Friday. Under the Insurance Act, NIC must seek the prior approval of its audited accounts by the Commission before they are published.

Ms Josephine Aguma, the spokesperson of NIC, last week said the company was finalising its audited results in line with the decision reached during a meeting with the commission on June 30. “The finalised audited financial statements will be submitted to the UIC and following UIC’s approval, will be submitted to Uganda Securities Exchange for direction before publication,” Ms Aguma said.

That E-Mail From India’s Prime Minister

After a triple bombing in Mumbai killed 21 people last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s office issued a statement condemning the terrorist attacks -- from a Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Hotmail address.

Singh’s staff’s use of a free e-mail account is typical of most government workers, who log into Hotmail, Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Gmail and Yahoo! Inc.’s e-mail to conduct official business. They also list those addresses on agency websites and business cards.

Bureaucrats avoid the government system because it covers only 10 percent of federal employees, doesn’t include the latest security patches and can’t be accessed via India’s 840 million mobile-phone connections. That preference for free e-mail accounts threatens the safety and veracity of government information because the data is moving through computer servers outside India, cybersecurity experts said.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” said Pawan Duggal, a New Delhi lawyer who argues information-technology cases before India’s Supreme Court. “It’s really quite amazing that, as a nation, we haven’t yet woken up to the idea that sensitive government information should be shared through secure channels, not Hotmail or Yahoo.”