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{
    "id": 1060109,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1060109/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 250,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kitui Central, WDM-K",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) Makali Mulu",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1955,
        "legal_name": "Benson Makali Mulu",
        "slug": "benson-makali-mulu"
    },
    "content": "(GDP) in terms of revenue. We have now gone down to about 15 per cent if you look at the current projections. The question I ask myself is this: What has happened? Why are things not working as expected? Hon. Speaker, many factors are attributed to this. Some like where we have leakages in the system; some where we are giving waivers and people are taking advantage of that and just the general administration of revenue collection. What is happening is that if we have to help this country, our first point in terms of focus should be the way we collect our revenue. Once we collect revenue, you will realise that issues of supplementary budgets where we are talking of under- provision, no provision at all or emergencies will be taken care of. Therefore, my contribution would be that the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning, working closely with all other relevant committees, needs to interrogate the issue of revenue collection and try to find out why we are not getting it right. The other issue is about parastatals, and I like what my colleagues have said. That we must come up with a way of really ensuring that the money we give to the parastatals ends up improving the lives of Kenyans. Most of those parastatals have just become institutions that draw money from the Exchequer and nothing comes from them. What we need is a situation where, as a House, we interrogate their budgets. I have said this many times. If we want to get this Budget right, a time might come where we will start demanding for itemised budgets for some of those SAGAs, so that we can see what it is that they are doing with the money that they are given. When you give those institutions only money for paying salaries and they are supposed to be investment institutions for this Government, then there is a question mark. I really want to encourage us to start interrogating budgets for those parastatals in more details. If you look at this Supplementary Budget, you will realise that we are now providing for under-provided salaries; or we either want to meet that gap or something that was left out completely, and we now want to provide for it. I was asking myself this question: In a year in any organisation, you know all your employees. You know how many clerks you have, senior officers and chief executive officers. Informed by that, you come up with a budget on salaries. So, unless you have sacked people, employed additional people or salary increments, you have no reason to ask for more resources on salaries. This is something that does not come out clearly every time we discuss the Budget. Why are we being asked to provide for salaries? Is it that people were sacked, over-employed or people had salary increments? This is an area we need to push hard because I see a situation where this House might be appropriating resources to pay ghost workers. If that happens, then we are automatically in shit in terms of financial management. The other important point as we discuss this Supplementary Budget is the issue of new projects. The law is clear that in a Supplementary Budget, you should not introduce new development projects. The law is very clear. I do not see why this should even be a matter of debate in this House. We should just get a Supplementary Budget where that is not there. And if you really think that these new projects are important, then we are almost doing the estimates next month. You can bring those new projects in the estimates so that we can start introducing some credibility in the budget-making process. I think that is lacking to some extent. The other important issue is that time has come where we need to tighten our belts. I think we are biting more than we can swallow. We are biting more than we can chew. Time has come for us to tighten our belts which in technical terms we call austerity measures. As a House, we now need to be more thorough and ensure that we are only approving what I would call ‘growth enhancing expenditure’. That is expenditure that is going to grow the cake. By growing the cake and in economics we say ‘growing the cake’ is economic growth, now the cake will be bigger and The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}