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{
    "id": 1117570,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1117570/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 418,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "expected the Committee on Finance and Budget to dig deep and tell us the implication of debt on Kenya‟s development agenda. Nonetheless, this report makes for good reading because we have got submissions from various stakeholders. Unfortunately, many of the stakeholders are Government entities and agencies that are quite involved in the discussions, negotiations and management of public debt. So, you do not expect that they are going to tell you that the decisions they made are unsustainable and not viable. Madam Temporary Speaker, how I would have appreciated if the Committee on Finance and Budget talked to civil societies and other groups such as policy institutes and think tanks that have been looking into this matter. We established the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). That is a statutory body established by an Act of Parliament with some very eminent persons yet I have rarely seen a report of this House quoting what the KIPPRA said. Why do we waste resources by setting up such a high level public policy institute yet we do not want to benefit from it? If you ask the National Treasury whether the debt is sustainable, definitely they will tell you the debt is sustainable because they are responsible for it. We would have expected institutions like the KIPPRA, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and other civil society players to make an input. To that extent, I think this report is not complete. Perhaps, that is the reason, as I said earlier, the recommendations are a bit lazy. We do not disagree that borrowing is a bad thing. Even in our private matters, we all borrow. If you want to step from your position to a position of greater economic empowerment, you have to take some risks and borrowing is one of them because you borrow with the hope that you are going to, like the parable of talents says, do something with it, so that it becomes bigger than what you had borrowed and you can pay back. A few years ago when we took to the streets when we were calling for transparency and disclosure on the Eurobond that the nation had taken, some of us were called names. In fact, there were insinuations even by Members who were leading this House then that some of us had lost our marbles. They asked why we were demonstrating outside on issues of Eurobond when we could have sorted that matter. I am happy that today there are a few Sauls who have become Pauls because they are now proclaiming a curse on those who have bankrupted this nation through borrowing of the Eurobond style. Nonetheless, we went to the streets and marched to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK). Madam Temporary Speaker, I can see the former Senate Majority Leader looking at me a bit suspiciously, but I am not referring to him. Even though he just proclaimed a curse on those who have bankrupted this country, he was not been with us on the streets when we were talking about the Eurobond. He was not with us when we went to the CBK. He was not with us when we were complaining that the CBK gave us redacted bank account statements. He was not with us when we were complaining why the President had rejected a request by the Auditor-General to go and audit books of accounts of the Government of Kenya and confirm whether the Eurobond money came to Kenya. It is only a fool who does not change their mind. The Eurobond matter is captured in this report. Kenya borrowed to pay recurrent expenditure yet the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act is clear that any borrowing"
}