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{
    "id": 1222686,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1222686/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 320,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mathare, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Anthony Oluoch",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker. I thank the Budget and Appropriations Committee for coming up with the Budget Policy Statement. Allow me to first comment on and agree with the Chairperson on the question of timelines. As we were engaging with our respective committees, I do agree that the timelines involved in the exercise ought to be expanded from 14 days to 28 days. One of the experiences that we had in our respective Departmental Committees is that the respective SAGAs focus too much on the Budget at the expense of policy and for these reasons other than the recommendation of expansion of time, I think this Committee should have gone a step further and said that we need to unbundle BPS from the Budget ceiling so that these issues can be considered separately. This is to enable them to be processed in a manner that allows policy to be determined as the anchor for the Budgets. The Budget ceiling and the crunching of numbers should be done separately. Secondly, I agree that the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy that was adopted yesterday should be attached to the budget-making process. The House resolved so yesterday. I think that is important. I do recognise that the Budget and Appropriations Committee has given recognition to the fact that the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy should be attached to the BPS. Hon. Speaker, on a point I wished to have raised yesterday, this Committee should have gone a step further. It ought to have noted that in attaching debts to how public debt is defined, we should have gone further and recommended that public debt should be reopened with consideration to its definition. The prioritisation of foreign debt as one of the things that we need to offset from our Budget every year at the expense of, for instance, pending bills is something that we ought to look at. In my view, public debt should be redefined in a way that we are able to look at debt that is incurred in the course of government engagement. This includes public pending bills which if unlocked would go into the economy. The manner in which we have defined public debt right now allows us to send foreign exchange to foreigners at the expense of what we do in our country today. I also support the resolution that the Budget and Appropriations Committee should engage the NG-CDF when administration blocks and police stations are being built. Looking at what has happened in the social interventions and the stimulus package during the last administration, billions of shillings were spent by the Government in putting in place very sub- standard school infrastructure and purchase of desks, which should have been attached to the NG-CDF. The NG-CDF is so circumscribed in the manner in which procurement is done and how projects are isolated that it goes beyond what the national Government and the county governments do in undertaking and implementing their projects. I, therefore, make this recommendation. Hon. Speaker, lastly, on the question of equity, when we engage in public debt and foreign debt, there should be an understanding and appreciation that when we incur foreign debt, the payments are done by every Kenyan. Foreign debt that is incurred ought to go into development in all corners of this country, and not just in Nairobi and its environs. Areas like Turkana and Wajir should have 50 per cent of the money that we borrow as foreign debt while other counties that are already developed, starting from Nairobi to Kiambu, Mombasa, Kisumu…"
}