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{
    "id": 1382322,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1382322/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 208,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dagoretti North, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Beatrice Elachi",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker. I also rise to support this Report and appreciate the work that has been done by the Committee in terms of looking at how our country is strained by debt, the risks involved and what we need to do. When you look at the Report, you realise the Controller of Budget (CoB) has provided serious insights that we need to ask ourselves a few questions whether we like her or not. One thing she has brought out clearly is that there is no way the Government can spend Ksh4 billion or Ksh5 billion on debt interest composed of domestic interest payments. We then come with Ksh300 billion that is foreign interest payments worth Ksh105 billion. She questions us and says that if we continue with this trend, the country will be distressed. Parliament has been given the opportunity to interrogate those reports and the budget but, one thing this House can do to help the country is by looking at different natural resources that we have, like minerals, and determining how we can use them to pay some of those debts. We agree to pay interest on debts that have not been disbursed. In the last administration, that was the biggest challenge. We borrowed money that we were unable to spend and later found ourselves owing very high interest rates. We thereafter started complaining. Today, we are here and have raised everything we can but, most importantly, how do we balance ourselves and look at the different sectors and parastatals that are ailing. It is time we agreed that there is so much that the national Government can do to create revenue to deal with our current debt."
}