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{
    "id": 1379750,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1379750/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 146,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tigania West, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) John K Mutunga",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "(BPS). It is priority number eight, yet it is the most important. You cannot speak about Kenya without quoting something in agriculture. You will not be talking about Kenya. Agriculture is the mainstay of this economy, yet we allocate it 3.5 per cent. It is not that we are not guided as a country. We are signatories to the Maputo Declaration, signed in 2003, which said that we were supposed to have increased the funding to agriculture as a proportion of the national budget to 10 per cent in about five years. Come to 2008, we had not done it. There was a review of the Maputo Declaration between 2013 and 2014. This was held in Equatorial Guinea, in a town called ‘Malabo’. That provision was reviewed. They came up with specific parameters to measure the growth and development in agriculture by putting money into it because money drives development. Despite the Malabo Declaration, which has specific targets in every agricultural sub- sector, Kenya has not responded yet. Then, we have bi-annual reviews. We have under- performed in the greater majority of the aspects every time we are reviewed. The question is, do we not know? Is it that we do not know? Is it that we are ignorant? Is it that we do not care? I want to say what I said in the beginning. You are out of order if you speak about this country and do not talk about agriculture. You are not speaking about Kenya. Secondly, we have the potential to support this country to go where it is supposed to go. Countries that grew in the past, the so-called developed countries, grew from industries like cotton. They rose from the textile and apparel industries. Why are we wasting an opportunity as we watch our people languish in poverty? I support this Bill."
}