Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1134188,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1134188/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 168,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "When the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Planning, Mr. Ukur Yatani, appeared before us, the position of the Committee on Finance and Budget was straight and clear. We told him that we could not accept what he had presented to us. We told him that if the size of the national overall budget is growing, then the size of funds and resources that go to the counties must equally grow. Anything short of that was completely unacceptable to us. We mentioned this to the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Planning. We pointed out in our report that the only reason that we would have maintained a figure of Kshs370 billion going to counties is if in the follow up to our recommendation and report as a House on our debt management strategy as a country, is if we had cut down on our fiscal deficit. However, they are not willing to listen. If you read through this budget, the fiscal deficit moves by a whooping Kshs891billion. It takes us close to the debt ceiling that we proposed before this House. There is reason to strongly believe that many keen followers of the budget making process in this country are asking us not to pass this BPS. If we pass this BPS in its current form and state, we will be raising the debt ceiling without making it clear to the citizens of this country. We need to be cautious about the work that we are doing. We speak with a lot of concern because there is generally an agreed thinking across the breath and space of the Republic of Kenya that things have gone wrong in this country yet, unfortunately, we are so obsessed with all the things that do not matter such as our politics, who will be the next president and can we shortchange the other person. We are not focusing on the things that matter. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, many of us have returned from the just concluded East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) Inter-Parliamentary Games. While travelling to Tanzania, something struck my curiosity at the Namanga Border and I asked one of the revenue officers about it. The revenue officer informed me that we the leaders of this country need to make changes on how things are run at our borders. If you are coming into Kenya from the Tanzania side, you will find hundreds of trucks that bring in goods into the Republic of Kenya yet there are absolutely no trucks exporting goods from Kenya into Tanzania. The revenue officer informed me that there is only one scanner at the border post; the scanner that belongs to the Government of Kenya meant to inspect goods that are coming into the country from Tanzania. There is nothing on the Tanzanian side because the trucks that go to Tanzania from Kenya go there empty. We might be priding ourselves as the super power of the region and that our economy is bigger from the data sent by the World Bank. We may be priding ourselves on our $100billion worth of GDP while the closest to us in the region is Tanzania whose GDP is at about $60 billion worth of GDP. We are still a super power in the region, but until when? All evidence indicates that the rest of the EAC countries are catching up with us. They are doing the trade balance. For the last two years, trade between us and Tanzania has tilted in favour of Tanzania. For the first time since Independence, Tanzanians are selling more goods to us than we are selling to them. That points out that there is something fundamentally wrong with how we manage our economy. If you read through"
}