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{
    "id": 102827,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/102827/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 224,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister’s Statement on the Budget came out clearly. There are few encouraging statements and increases but there are a few concerns I would like to touch on. The first one touches on the budget process itself. It looks like the Minister and the Budget Committee which I belong to are not reading the budget process in the same manner. I want to pick it from the huge variation that you can observe between what the Minister gave us during the Budget Policy statement and his Budget Speech. The glaring variation seems to tell us that the Minister was in a hurry to make a Budget Policy Statement and not follow anything he was going to use during the Budget preparation itself. For example, if you look at the ordinary revenue that he gave us during the policy statement in March, he told us that he was expecting to collect Kshs586 billion. In the Budget, he is giving us Kshs688 billion. This is a difference of a whole Kshs100 billion. Is it that he did not have the right parameters on how he was going to collect this revenue or he was trying to satisfy this House by bringing a policy statement which was premature and a statement which was not properly prepared? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the current budgeting process brings in transparency, prioritization, rationalization and helps the country to decide on where we would like to put our money. Before the policy statement is given in March, it is expected that the Ministry will have gone out to do what we call the budget public hearings. It is, therefore, expected that by the time the budget policy statement is being made, the public hearings will be taken account of. I listened to one lady who was interviewed on the streets of Nairobi when she was asked what she thinks about the Budget. She said: “As usual, our public hearings will not be taken account of”. She said: “Watch it and you will see it for yourself”. This means the public is starting to feel that the expenditures we are undertaking in giving these public hearings are yielding nothing. As the Budget Committee, we are also feeling as though the times we have with the Minister are not helping at all. From the advent of the Fiscal Management Act, we were supposed to be working through the process with the Minister, as a Committee so that we all agree on what the priorities of this country are. We were also expecting that after the budget policy statement had been made, the different departments would start to set their priorities and come up with their strategic plans at the Ministerial levels and tie that to what Kenya calls Vision 2030 which is the driver of development of this country. In the absence of that, it is very difficult for us to understand why we are spending the way we are spending. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my other concern, therefore, is how some of the items were planted in the Budget. One of them is the empowering of youths. The Minister made a very good statement on employment of youth and how he was going to address it. He gave us three very good points on what he was going to do. One of them was the creation of a revolving fund worth Kshs3.8 million. In his statement, he said that some money was going to be given to SMEs or selected banks. I wonder whether the Minister was here last year when we discussed the way the Women’s Enterprise Development Fund (WEDF) and the Youth Enterprise Development Fund were mishandled by the same banks. The WEDF in particular, suffered a great blow because the institutions that were selected to handle the money; one of them was given a whole Kshs200 million. This money was not even spent on women. Then at the end of the day, we are told that the money was returned without any interest. The Minister confirmed"
}