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{
    "id": 1095828,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1095828/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 340,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kibwezi West, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) Patrick Musimba",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1804,
        "legal_name": "Patrick Mweu Musimba",
        "slug": "patrick-mweu-musimba"
    },
    "content": "Major transactions occur through crypto currencies though in a virtual frame. How then do our regulators collect taxes? How do you pinpoint what transaction took place and when? It is blind to any single regulator yet we are not proactive enough. We know all our developmental programmes are all pegged on how we collect our taxes. Our developmental programmes, moving forward; our commitment to lenders is pegged on our tax collections yet there is no proactivity in terms of how to step into that space and see how to get that realm. Today we are doing lending and there is an opportunity. What about investment? If you are doing currency trading for instance, and you are a youth and you are simply saying that today we have 8 million unemployed youths around Kenya who are skilled, having gone to school and graduated, and they are at home because we cannot mainstream them… If we say we have an active policy, which is something we could have done even with the Uwezo Fund and say, “How can you not get into the currency markets globally and just target to make a dollar or three per day?” that would be Kshs300 a day and Kshs9000 a month. These are the proactive things of using this platform to move forward. Where is the education? We are getting into space of people who found a gap but that is what entrepreneurs do. They look for opportunities within an industry, marshal resources and look forward to their risks and rewards because the risks are there for digital lenders. People are registering multiple lines, borrowing using one line and switching it off. How do they catch up? How do we mainstream that? How do we assist them to optimise their capital? They do not tell the sobbing story of how much more they lost. That is why they are pricing their risk at 138 per cent. This is because they are entering into a hitch but then there is no equity. We talked about the Communications Authority of Kenya doing sim registration. That campaign went on for a short while and stopped. We know that the valuations of many of our telecom operators are based on the number of subscribers, and not on the number of subscribers who are active. Today you look at an activity. We know that people have multiple mobile phone lines but there are serious risks. The KYC that Hon. Kweyu spoke about is not active or maybe is non-existent because people are looking at how to make money. So, these are the challenges. Indeed, the Committee by Hon. Waihenya is proactive and forward looking but we need to go deeper. There are issues to do with succession. Today our laws are silent. If people pass on and they had M-Pesa lines, it is only them who knew what the balance was. What is the inheritance level? How is this captured? How is the reporting supposed to be done? So, there is a big pool of things. These are the questions that we need to address, moving forward. How do we address the issue of data mining at that level? There are consumer patterns which are being done through mobile money. All the lenders have that advent. How are we deploying into that realm? How are we looking at the area and arena of the internet of things, which is taking over and mapping you out? We are seeing our supermarkets collapsing but, really, there is a more proactive thing going on. If people have seen, we can be able to move Kshs300 billion as disposable income, which would be moving around an economy. Certainly, such an eventuality would catch the attention of people in other markets across the world, and they would wonder why we cannot buy things from them. So, we are getting into an era of virtual management of our hard-earned money and losing it through a currency bleed because we do not have commensurate amounts coming in through our exports because our exports have been overtaken by events, which means we must focus more on diaspora remittances as a way of cushioning us from what we are bleeding out. So, I support this Bill on digital lending as a step forward by the Committee but we need to go further. The Committee needs to have a standing sub-committee to sit with the Committee 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."
}