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{
    "id": 1134114,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1134114/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 94,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "about consumption. The Chairman has read to the House that the Budget is focusing on consumption in agriculture, education, drought response, infrastructure, financial inclusion, energy consumption, and environmental conservation. Where is the growth? We must compete with other economies. The other day I was meeting the President of Korean community in Africa. He was telling me, “I am old enough to tell you that in the 1960’s, you guys were better than us.” This is a fact we know. How come today the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Korea is over USD45 million dollars yet we are still at less than USD1 million dollars. Mr. Speaker, Sir, Kenyans must ask ourselves questions: Where did we take the wrong turn? President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Government has done a lot about infrastructure, and we salute this, but at what cost? As a Committee, we should also start interrogating the cost of public projects in this country, because a good intention is being executed badly. We have very good high profile prestigious infrastructure projects but at what cost? These are questions we must ask ourselves. Mr. Speaker, Sir, if we do not control our appetite for borrowing, this country is going to choke and run into problems. I am very sure that in rolling out this Budget, the National Treasury is still salivating for more and more borrowing from our benefactors, particularly the Chinese who are very cruel on recovering their money. You know what they have done to Sri Lanka and Zambia, and what they are likely to do to us if we are not careful. We should not put ourselves in a lion as a country that has graduated from Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) to a medium developing country to be blackmailed and eventually foreclosed because of reckless borrowing. Parliament, particularly the National Assembly has failed this country. This is because the Constitution is very clear that the national Government cannot borrow money from anywhere without the approval of Parliament, which is limited to the National Assembly. Nobody comes to the Senate to seek authority to borrow; the National Assembly gives authority. When you go the National Assembly, their debates are jokes. Members there just speak for one minute, then they stand up and say; “I support”. However, if you ask them what they are supporting, they cannot tell yet the country is busy borrowing and borrowing. This House must distinguish itself and go in the annals of history, that even if constitutionally we are not obligated to control the borrowing like the National Assembly is, in future when constitutional change comes and this House is properly restored as an ‘Upper House’, people will read and say the Senator for Laikipia said this on this date that helped the country or the Senator for Marsabit stood firm and was counted and everybody else. Nobody will erase this history from you. We must stand firm on this. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want us as the Senate to ask ourselves questions; if indeed we are choked by public debt, why are we rolling out budgets that keep on ballooning? Why are we not cutting our suit according to the cloth available? This is the question. We have been told that we are now moving from a Kshs3.03 trillion Budget to a Kshs3.309 trillion Budget, yet we have also been told in the same statement that about 70 per cent of our"
}