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{
    "id": 1169608,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1169608/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 237,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Mwaura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13129,
        "legal_name": "Isaac Maigua Mwaura",
        "slug": "isaac-mwaura"
    },
    "content": ". This is to the detriment of the various aspects that, of course, make them feel closer to the Government, We are seeing an increase in expenditure around infrastructure. It is gobbling up a lot of public money, yet it is not properly regulated. What is the cost of a kilometre of road? What is the cost of these huge public projects? Is it really feasible to have a Kshs80 billion road? I used it the other day. For sure, I was surprised that it is only 10 minutes from the Airport to Museum Hill. However, is that really the solution to the whole of the Nairobi City County traffic problem? I beg to differ. We now have austerity measures that target insignificant areas. Such areas include for example, providing milk to children, sanitary pads and sunscreen lotions. Those ones are not the issue and they can never be. We have to look at the elephant in the room. Now, look at what our mathematics look like. We are spending about Kshs900 billion on development expenditure. All this is externalised debt. I heard my dear sister, Sen. Farhiya, talk about the new kind of loan. It cannot be any better. Even if loans were only 25 per cent of our debt stock, it does not necessarily mean that we are off the hook. How did we end up in commercial loans? We were cheated that our economy was rebased by 25 per cent, from Kshs7 trillion to Kshs10 trillion. Madam Temporary Speaker, this increase of public debt ceiling by way of regulation is another way of confirming that even when Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) projected that our economy has grown to Kshs10 trillion, we are borrowing everything. It is actually some form of rebasing again. What does that mean to the common mwananchi ? It means that then the Government will have a higher appetite for loans. It means that then local banks and lenders will be more willing to lend to Government than Sen. (Dr.) Musuruve, who may want to start some commercial apartments somewhere. It means that anybody who has finished school and does not want to be employed cannot get a loan from their local bank or credit facility. Is that the way to grow the economy? Madam Temporary Speaker, when you look at what the Government is spending money on, there are so many people who are being paid to the tune of about Kshs700 billion in terms of the wage bill, but also more poignantly, the issue of the developments that are not accruing on investment on the tax payer. I think that is the tragedy of our moment because we were unable to differentiate the separation of the National Treasury as it were and the Ministry of Finance and Planning. That was not supposed to be the case. The Constitution architecture envisaged that they should be different, so that there is proper oversight and separation of responsibilities and powers."
}