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{
    "id": 1399259,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1399259/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 249,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wafula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 348,
        "legal_name": "Davis Wafula Nakitare",
        "slug": "davis-nakitare"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. As I was spewing wisdom last time, the sugar industry serves at most 400,000 small-scale farmers. These numbers, when you do your multiply effect, many Kenyans rely on the sugar industry to put food on their table and take their children to school. That is why the Bill comes in handy to ensure that we boost productivity, streamline processing, enhance value addition, and create favourable regulatory framework. This legislation is expected to revive the industry to meet the domestic needs and generate surplus for export. As we were going across the country in Bungoma, Vihiga, by extension, Kisumu, Kericho and Busia, there are a few challenges that came across this Bill. There are a few challenges and observations that came across. They include challenges of sugar production. Sugar producers face many challenges including, inadequate infrastructure, high production costs and limited access to modern technology. This Bill will put into framework an environment within which these producers can mitigate these challenges. The county in conjunction with the national Governments will help improve on that. The market dynamics also came into play because the local industry faces many challenges from the importation of sugar. As we all know, the lack of the sugar board to ensure that we only import when there is a deficiency gave leeway to cartels who use Government opportunities to flood the market and deny the common farmer and the industry the capacity to flourish Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the need for investment and the importance of increased investments in the sugar industry to improve and modernise infrastructure to improve competitiveness is the reason why this Bill must go through. On stakeholder collaboration, this Bill captures many stakeholders. You have the national and county governments and the millers. When all these stakeholders come together, you have a collaboration that is geared towards ensuring that the farmer gets good from his hard work. Therefore, Kenyans are waiting for us to debate and contribute on this Bill. As I had said earlier, we have an aspect of pricing committee and adjudication of issues. All these is to ensure that the industry is sustained. This is because, if you have a pricing committee that will look at the pricing of the sugarcane from farmers, at the end of the day our people will enjoy. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, another element that Members would want to know is, that we have some catchment areas and zoning which have come in handy. History has The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}