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{
    "id": 1213834,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1213834/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 205,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mosop, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Abraham Kirwa",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Once again, thank you Hon. Temporary Speaker for giving me this opportunity to contribute on this Report of the Public Debt and Privatisation Committee. This is a very crucial topic for us as a nation. I wish that all Members were present. I thank the Chairman and the Vice-Chairperson for the great presentation. At the moment, the country is going through a huge debt crisis. As of December 2022, the public debt stock in Kenya was at Ksh9.15 trillion. We are talking of Ksh1.3 trillion to service the loans. This puts this country above the debt ceiling. This will force this House to come back and renegotiate or maybe increase our debt ceiling. As I speak, the highest expense on public debt is servicing the domestic debts that we have already incurred. About 73 per cent of all the expenses in this next financial year is going towards servicing domestic debts. I know we have also incurred foreign debts, but the cost of domestic debt is extremely high for us as a nation. We need to sit down and reconsider where we are going as a country. Our public debt continues to be our biggest expense. At the same time, our foreign exchange is dwindling. We have a crisis on foreign exchange. We do not have enough dollars in the country because we are not producing enough exports. As such, we keep getting into debt. By just coming up with the Public Debt and Privatisation Committee, that will review the public debt the Government owes and we did the right thing. The National Treasury needs to sit down and review some of the issues that need to be addressed so that we can lower the debt of this country. If we continue at this same rate of borrowing and getting into debt, this country might end up as Ghana which had to declare bankruptcy for them to remain afloat. However, as a nation, we have to address the issue of debt so that we do not plunge into deeper and deeper commitments. There are few recommendations that I believe will help us to come out of the debt crisis and for us not to get deeper into debt. One is to increase our exports. Two, we need to critically look at our expenses like the pension. We are paying a lot of money in some pensions. The National Treasury should ensure that the Pensions Departments undertakes proof of life certification and to identify deceased pensioners and dependents within six months. This is to ensure that payments are to legitimate people. We are making payments or pensions to people who have died. We are not really verifying whether these individuals are still alive. The other issue we are running into is the National Treasury paying pension to Asian and European pensioners who retired due to Africanisation of the public sector after Independence in 1963 and paid through the Crown Agent Organisation in the UK. The process is paying people we do not know whether they really exist, from 1963 up to this time. Very few people are still alive. But the cost of pension continues to go up. Nobody is saying we should go to this country and verify whether the people we are paying still exist. A few agents continue to take this money and we do not know where the money is going. There are so many expenses we continue incurring as a nation without thinking what to do to reduce our national debt. Hon. Temporary Speaker, I support this Report. We really need to sit down as a nation, reconsider our debt situation, and make sure that we are responding appropriately."
}