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{
    "id": 1051962,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1051962/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 199,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Were",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13183,
        "legal_name": "Petronila Were Lokorio",
        "slug": "petronila-were-lokorio"
    },
    "content": "that remains at the national level to be reduced to 65 per cent, by increasing the percentage to counties to 35 per cent. It was not to retain the 85 per cent at the national level and instead take conditional grants into equitable share. I found this to be mischievous. Those of us who said that we want more funds to the counties have sort of been played. It is important that we reduce the amount of money that remains at the national level, mainly because most of the key functions that take up a huge amount of money in the budget like health and agriculture are devolved. We cannot continue to have money meant for those devolved functions retained at the national level. Our fight to have funds follow functions, which is also the principle that was followed by the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) last year and this year will not suffice if most of the money remains at the national level. Be that as it may, that the conditional grants are no longer there and all the money is now is under equitable share, it calls upon the oversight houses, the county assemblies, who are our primary oversight givers, and Parliament, to be more active in our oversight role. This will make sure that we hold our counties accountable and make sure that the monies are spent appropriately according to their budgets. Again, we have said that they should stop being wish lists, but should continue to be realistic budgets that are based on what has been given to the counties for the last three years. Our oversight role needs to be increased in the coming year. Finally, the debt management policy that has been outlined in the BPS has left out a few issues, for example, our public debt management policy. It has not been outlined how we move forward from where we have come from. All these debts that we accumulated, the Eurobond and other forms of external debt, how are we managing them, so that we do not repeat what was done before and how we got ourselves in this mess? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I want to inform this House that the party Amani National Congress (ANC), through Hon. Bunyasi, has introduced a Bill in the National Assembly called the Public Debt Management Authority Bill. I urge Members, that when that Bill comes to this House, hopefully before the end of this year, we support it. It will help keep in check the issues of public debt. I also want to congratulate the seven bearded sisters that voted against the increase of the debt ceiling last year. I would like to mention that I debated against that increase. We were vindicated, because debt has choked this country, and the Government is right now at a loss on what exactly it needs to do based on this BPS on a medium term debt management strategy. That is not properly and convincingly outlined. Thank you. I support."
}