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{
    "id": 1258823,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1258823/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 944,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "our GDP. We also zoomed in on tertiary production, which is services. It constitutes 65 per cent of our GDP. The paradox is this: The service industry, which constitutes 65 per cent of our GDP, does not employ as many people as primary production, which constitutes only 18.2 per cent. We see that the primary production that a majority of Kenyans are engaged in, especially farmers, constitutes very little because productivity in the primary production is very low. A salary, income or revenue for one person employed in the service industry would take like 20 farmers to make the same. That is why we have made policy and allocation decisions to spur production, especially primary and secondary production. It is because they are the biggest employers and they have the capacity to net in as many Kenyans as possible. That is why we allocated money to fertiliser in the upcoming Budget so that we do not have those kinds of shortfalls again and to enhance the productivity of farmers. That is why we, as a Government, are lifting the moratorium on mining so that it starts to become a serious revenue stream for our country. We even allocated monies to ground truthing so that we could make our mining sector as significant as it should be. We are also lifting the moratorium on forestry because it is a huge source of wealth for this country. However, as you know, in regard to the economy and GDP, wealth does not count as much as revenue. Therefore, we have to find ways of transferring or transforming our wealth into revenue, because as we do the Budget, the revenue side has no slot for wealth. It only has slots for revenue. That is why it is important to transform our forestry resources to revenue streams for the Government. When you come to secondary production, we did that in terms of aggregation centres and industrial parks. That is so that this service industry has something to service. We are trying to bridge the gap and the deficit. Hon. Speaker, the other alternative to not having a Supplementary Budget that can help cut expenditures is to expand the deficit. However, this is not a wise decision, especially given our current economic status. Moving forward, the same tax revenue measures that are enumerated will go a long way towards bridging the deficit gap. The deficit we are budgeting for in the next Financial Year is around Ksh718 billion. However, in the year of consideration of those Supplementary Estimates, we have a deficit of Ksh860 billion and another Ksh200 billion that had been spent under Article 223. Therefore, the deficit in the Financial Year 2022/2023 is Ksh1.1 trillion."
}