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{
    "id": 1119274,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1119274/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 351,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "There is also public and publicly guaranteed debt service to exports ratio. When I was in the Ad hoc Committee on the COVID-19 Situation in Kenya, I said that there is a fallacy. I think that we have seen it when the fuel prices went up recently. I think Sen. Omogeni was a Member of my Committee. When we looked at the economic pillars, one of the issues we looked at was our import cover based on our foreign exchange reserves. We said that there is a fictitious indicator. We thought that had good money, but it was because the price of oil was low. It was low because foreign travel had been suspended. The biggest demand is from international foreign travel. What happened immediately countries opened up? We are now at Kshs134. I think it went to Kshs127. We are exposing Kenyans. Madam Temporary Speaker, a lot needs to be done. I know the National Treasury, because I have worked there, and they have been here. If you look at their presentation from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), they will come and just--- I think their mantra is that ‘if you cannot convince them, confuse them.’ They will act all lyrical and say that they are undertaking fiscal consolidation. They like those big terms. When they say those terms and are talking to lawyers like Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr., yet they are businessmen, they are not challenged properly. When they came to ask for the debt ceiling to go up, they said that when it goes up they will do a number of things. Fiscal consolidation was one of them. They said that they want to restructure a lot of our commercial loans to be causational, so that the rates go down and to re-amortize and spread out the repayment period. This is such that what we are paying every month does not put a burden on our economy and Exchequer. Madam Temporary Speaker, has that been done? It has not been done. In fact, under what they have recommended, this Report should say that no further review of the ceiling should even be considered, because they will come back to you. Until they show us what they did when the last one was reconsidered, we are just playing. I like what Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. has said. Whoever becomes President in this next regime can do nothing. I do not think I will go into amending this Report, but certain things need to be put in place. One, let us be given that plan of how we are restructuring the debts that we currently have. Number two, we must start a process of reducing the budgets in this country. We do not need a budget of Kshs3 trillion just for the sake of a big budget when"
}