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{
    "id": 1134249,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1134249/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 55,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "were once thriving. Those businesses could not pay back their loans when we came up with draconian rules to tame the spread of the virus. We are not seeing that undertaking in this BPS. Mr Speaker, Sir, I did not expect the national Government to bring another business as usual budget. Unfortunately, this business as usual thinking has flown from the national to county governments. If you look at county governments’ budgets, they are budgets that were done on the assumption that we are in a post-COVID-19 era. In fact, county governments’ budgets are not incremental because they knew they were going to get Kshs370 billion. They have just made the same allocations to roads and health like they had made before. They have not shifted their priorities. Even if you did not consider that we are in a COVID-19 era, the President’s pet subject is the Big Four Agenda. I asked a person from Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) what is in this BPS that tells me that manufacturing as a core pillar of the Big Four Agenda is going to receive significant support. This is effectively President Uhuru Kenyatta’s final budget. I do not see it anywhere. I do not see any policy declaration or proclamation that will give space to our Export Processing Zones (EPZs). Even for some of the money we are getting through the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), there are EPZs and firms in Athi River. The AGOA will expire in 2025. We are not seeing the Government’s proactive policy view. They are not seeing ahead to tell us what is going to happen to the manufacturing sector. We know how much the AGOA has supported the manufacturing sector, particularly the textile industry. I would have wished to see, for example, health which is part of the Big Four Agenda. What is that big thing? Interestingly, this BPS talks of a stimulus package. It sounds really nice until you look at the amount that has been allocated to it. That is Kshs26.2 billion. Out of Kshs3.0309 trillion, a sum of Kshs26 billion has been allocated to COVID-19 stimulus package. This is an embarrassment! If you look at the breakdown of that, we are told there will be Kshs1 billion for agriculture. It is just splitting Kshs1 billion or Kshs1.5 billion to whatever sectors. The National Treasury needs to get serious. I wish we had enough time to talk about these and force the National Treasury to rethink some of the priorities they have put in there. There must be greater connectivity between what we are doing as a BPS and the situation the country finds itself in that we are not in post-COVID-19, but in the COVID-19 era. This BPS has made some interesting revelations. For example, when it comes to issues of jobs, we are being told that 700,000 jobs have been lost in the previous year. Looking at 700,000 jobs, even if you ask yourself how many people are in formal employment in this country, out of that, this report tells us that about 350,000 of those jobs were in the informal sector. Kenyans are getting poorer by the day. We would have expected the Government to spend because of the COVID-19 pandemic because we have seen that in the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and other economies."
}