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{
    "id": 1173488,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1173488/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 233,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dagoretti South, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Kiarie",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13322,
        "legal_name": "John Kiarie Waweru",
        "slug": "john-kiarie-waweru"
    },
    "content": " Hon. Speaker, while I agree that the Member for Shinyalu has the right to call for end of debate at any point, I have to remind him that this is probably the most important business that this House will be undertaking before we close sine die, and the fact that even tomorrow in the headlines, you can be sure they will be reading that this House has actually lifted the borrowing cap for this country to Kshs10 trillion and un-procedurally so. Hon. Speaker, allow me to just prosecute my points and then we can handle the matter that has been raised by the Member for Shinyalu. Before I ceded the Floor, I was saying that before I say why I am opposing this, I would like to exonerate the Chairman emeritus of the Budget and Appropriations because a few things have been said here which are not true. It could not be further from the truth that the Chairman emeritus was party to raising the debt ceiling to Kshs9 trillion. I remember very well that, as a Member of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee, I had consultations with friends who are from the Committee on Delegated Legislation. I remember at the point when we were talking about raising the debt ceiling, the Chair emeritus of the Budget and Appropriations Committee actually spoke at a tripartite meeting of the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning, Committee on Delegated Legislation and the Budget and Appropriations Committee, where he said that this decision cannot be a unilateral decision by one committee. He was even proposing that if we have to raise the debt ceiling, we can only raise it to around Kshs7.5 trillion. But that was not the issue. The issue is that we keep digging ourselves deeper into a hole. We were here when we were debating the Budget Policy Statement and I was among the people who rose here and said that the deficit margin that we have been left with is only Kshs426 billion. At that point, they were seeking an amendment to raise it to Kshs800 billion. At that point, if we had made the right decision, we would not be finding ourselves in the problems that we find ourselves of not being able to finance the budget this year. I listened very carefully to the Leader of the Majority Party and he was saying that he has some lessons that he can give us in our free time. I do pray that some of the lessons that the Leader of the Majority Party would give this House is how the Kibaki Government was able to fully finance its budget without having to unnecessarily borrow. The truth of the matter is that when we borrow, we are not getting free money. When we borrow, we are actually borrowing from the future. When we steal borrowed money, we are actually stealing from the future. We cannot account for the money that we have been borrowing. We are getting into contracts that we cannot account for and that we cannot make public. This House has been asking for the contracts to be presented to it so that it is able to interrogate them even as we are going into the budget cycle. If we knew what we owe and what the terms are with the SGR contract; and if we knew what we borrowed for the expressway and what the terms of that contract are, this House would be better informed to make these decisions because this is the budget-making House. The cycle of debt is such that debt given at a time of boom can actually push an economy. But what normally happens is that a country can get excited with borrowing especially if they are able to borrow easily. What happens is that this boom ends up being a heavy yoke on the neck of The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}