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"id": 102550,
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Chairman, Sir, the areas that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance needs to address and needs more support is the issue of minerals and tourism. Kenya is endowed with a lot of minerals. Unfortunately, our minerals are under the black market process and not in the formal economy. We can grow our GDP by between 6 and 10 percent if we actually brought in international companies which can come and mine. This is because we have so many minerals in this country which are not known to the Government. We have not even bothered to map the country in terms of minerals. Our countryâs neighbours, that is, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia, are well advanced in this area. They know what they have on the ground and are exploiting them through inviting people to come and invest in these areas. Mr. Temporary Deputy Chairman, Sir, that said and done, I want the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance to seriously look at the issue of Kenya being investor-friendly. Foreign investment here is a shame and nightmare. For a foreign investor to come to Kenya and get a licence in order to set up production here is almost impossible, because of corruption. We are denying our people the opportunity for employment. We are also denying the country budgetary funds to develop it. We are simply confining our people to poverty simply because of corruption. Most of these areas, for example, minerals are handled by very few people. They sneak in minerals from all over the country, because when you look at our export of minerals, it is incredibly high. If it was actually properly accounted for, this country would benefit. Mr. Temporary Deputy Chairman, Sir, the issue of tourism is also very important. If you look at South Africa today, they would show adverts on the Maasai Mara and the Wildebeest migration and then they would say it is in South Africa. They do not want to say that what they are showing is actually Kenya. So, I think we should do much more to sell our tourism so that more tourists can come here. But I think it is more important to have a secure and stable country where people can come. When we see bombs being thrown all over the place because people who do not want the country to move forward, we deny ourselves the opportunity to develop. We also deny this country and our children the future. So, hand in hand to tourism is security. Security is so crucial to the development of tourism. We need, as a nation, to really put a lot of effort in terms of security and ensuring that our visitors have a very good time when they are here in Kenya. Mr. Temporary Deputy Chairman, Sir, I want to also thank the Minister on the issue of infrastructure. Indeed, the Government has put a lot of money to develop our highways, but I think we can do much more. While we continue developing the highways, which I do agree, let us also put a lot of money into the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF), so that we can murram our roads. This will open up roads and, hence, we can reach more Kenyans. Mr. Temporary Deputy Chairman, Sir, while we talk about food security, we have a lot of problems with storage of maize. In my own constituency, there is more maize lying in homes because my people have nowhere to take or sell. I understand that the National Cereals and Produce Board also is not able to purchase the produce from the farmers. I would want the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance to look at this area because if you discourage farmers by not buying their produce, then they would stop growing. Right now, we are about to harvest another crop of maize in my constituency,"
}