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{
    "id": 1222163,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1222163/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 231,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kilifi North, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Owen Baya",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "The accountability of Government starts in the House. Debt management is one of the things that we have lacked a mechanism to bring accountability to. However, in its wisdom, the 12th Parliament thought that this Committee should be constituted. I am also persuaded that the Members of the Committee are up to the task and will help this country. Runaway debt has been one of the problems that we have had in this country. The fourth regime of this country was probably the worst in terms of managing debt. If you look at the debt levels, we are at about Ksh9 trillion. This is something that this country needs to review. First, there are two things that the Committee highlighted, and we need to look at them: The debt itself and the cost of debt. The dollar keeps moving up. The higher the dollar goes, the more interest we pay. Therefore, this means that the cost of debt keeps on soaring. We are paying more money not because we borrowed more, but because the dollar is moving up. I like the recommendation by the Committee that we need to negotiate debt on the basis of the Kenyan Shilling. This is because since the Kenyan Shilling is constant, it is possible to manage the cost of debt. That is one of the things that we must manage as a country. The second important thing that comes out of this Committee and that I support is on the bank accounts. There are very many MDAs that have different accounts holding a lot of money there. However, when you ask the Consolidated Fund Services how much money we have there, they will say that we do not have money and yet, each MDA has some money that is not being used. The financial year is over and there is money being held in all those MDAs totalling to hundreds of billions of dollars. What happens to that money? Why do we have to go and look for fresh money to deposit in those accounts and yet, they do not use that money? We will end up with a debt that we have accrued and, on the other hand, we will have interest to pay. We are proposing that we only need to have one Treasury account. This is necessary so that, at any given time, when one will be asking about the amount of money that the Government has, he or she will be able to say that this one Treasury account has this much money and, therefore, the Government is not broke. If you ask Government mandarins that question today, they will tell you that the Government is broke and does not have any money. However, they will not explain why there is about Ksh100 billion or Ksh100 million lying in those accounts. If we consolidate those accounts into one Treasury account, we shall reduce borrowing in this country. This is very important. 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."
}