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{
    "id": 1421044,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1421044/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 234,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "conversation that we are having in this House on debt management strategy; they are going to reach a point where the pending bills are going to be more in terms of nominal value than the equitable shares that they are getting. We are going to wake up one day and find our counties in a lot of contract pressure from suppliers that need their money paid. The suppliers in the counties come on the basis of a contract. If there is one thing that the Constitution of Kenya and our laws protect is contracts to investors, suppliers and anybody who ends up getting into a dealing with any form of Government, whether national Government or county government. From where we are seeing ourselves heading as a country, the counties must start learning from this MTDS conversation in the Senate and Parliament in general. Counties are facing a serious challenge in terms of their own fiscal consolidation. Just to give you a perspective, currently, counties are spending on domestic travel, subsistence and hospitality. These areas are gobbling a lot of money from counties to the extent that the expenditure in some of these areas could be used to pay some of the pending bills. We know that in the national Government, as we try to raise money, the ordinary revenue from different Eurobonds and grants from external sources, the first charge has always been nationally paying for this debt. In fact, I remember last year, there were some weeks that the national Government was paying a whooping Kshs100 billion per week in debt. Our counties are going to start facing a situation where they pay the first charge of their money to suppliers in terms of pending bills, and rightfully so. If the counties and the national Government do not pay our suppliers, the common people in this country who are working day and night to supply goods and services to our Government, we shall be killing this economy. This is because without guaranteeing payment to these suppliers, the young people in this country that are working to supply goods and services to Government, then there is no enterprising economy that can go on. Therefore, this conversation should be larger. The idea of fiscal consolidation should be a larger conversation that we are having both at the county and national level. Otherwise, that is what ends up pressuring the national Government to keep adding taxes that sometimes do not make sense in whichever way you think about it. Even the pressure about the Affordable Housing Bill that we had here, was all the effort of the Government to see how to solve the housing equation for areas that they did not have their own money to put up the housing. Therefore, you end up forcing the common mwananchi to put their money into this fund because you cannot raise it by yourself. It ends up being another additional tax burden that they already have. If we do not solve this issue of Government expenditure, we will still have a problem in this debt management strategy. Lastly, I invite the House to start keeping the National Treasury to account with the data points that it has forwarded to this House with regard to shrinking that debt to GDP ratio. There is desire that by 2029, they are hoping to reduce it all the way to 55 per cent. 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."
}