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{
    "id": 1119236,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1119236/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 313,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Kibiru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13196,
        "legal_name": "Charles Reubenson Kibiru",
        "slug": "charles-reubenson-kibiru"
    },
    "content": "cent of revenues which will be available for financing other critical budgetary activities. At this level, expenditures on debt servicing have surpassed the expenditures meant for national Government development. That is about 188 per cent. Secondly, it has surpassed the transfers to county governments by 285 per cent. Probably that is why we support governors to get 35 per cent in the coming financial year because that is what we have always been promised. Madam Deputy Speaker, during the engagements, the committee noted that there was a reserved adherence to the constitutional requirements of openness and accountability when it came to debt management. This relates to the use of borrowed resources surrounding project information such as feasibility study, evaluation and status of implementation. When we met the National Treasury, we were pained to ask how they could approve Kshs86 million per kilometre of gravel road using borrowed money. That is the road that was mentioned the other day and it was also in the newspapers. I think it is from Lamu all the way to Garsen. That gravel road will cost this country about Kshs17 billion which is borrowed money. If you calculate, that is close to Kshs86 million per kilometre. That is just gravel and not tarmacked or asphalt road. Departments come up with wish lists. Can they not become responsible and tell that a road costing Kshs1 billion per kilometre cannot add value currently based on our economic situation? Those are some of the issues. We need openness and accountability. I think the Ministries need to be held responsible. The National Treasury should not just get wish lists and dish out money. Madam Deputy Speaker, this creates avenues for creeping of inefficiencies on the use of public debt as manifested by under-absorption of borrowed monies by Kshs74 billion in FY 2019/2020 as reported by the Auditor-General. Remember we borrowed that money and we are paying interest. We commit but we cannot absorb because probably somebody somewhere has not gotten the right contractor where they can benefit. That is also worrying. Lack of openness further weakens oversight mechanisms in terms of review, monitoring, and supervision of agencies, programmes, activities, and implementation. With that kind opaqueness, oversighting also becomes a bit tricky. We will make some recommendations as a committee and request the Senate to support what the Ministries and concerned entities need to do. Inefficiencies are also indicated through the continued incurrence of commitment fees as noted during engagement with various stakeholders. This is even more worrying. We commit funds and continue to pay commitment fees. From June 2016 to June 2021, this country that is struggling has paid Kshs14.3 billion as commitment fees. That is money that we are not utilizing. That is a shame on those who were ahead of us. They should be held accountable for such inefficiencies. That indicates a general wastage of public resources for meeting expenditures that are avoidable. The committee noted that there were no indications that there were measures being put in place to control these avoidable expenditures. We asked the stakeholders that we met, including the National Treasury, but they could not convince us. They had nothing to prove that somebody is feeling the pain of paying Kshs1.6 billion every year for monies that we are not utilizing. We have also made some recommendations on that."
}