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{
    "id": 1441451,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1441451/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 197,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nominated, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "I say so because the idea and perception that is coming across when I hear it a lot even with my colleagues across the aisle is that you need to tax Kenyans more to grow this economy and narrow the budget deficit,. Nothing can be further from the truth. Ask your team to compare and give you the data when we passed the Finance Bill of 2023. What effect has it had on revenue collection? Growth in revenue is 13.8 per cent if you compare revenue collection up to 12 months leading to March 2024. Compare that to the same period ending March 2023, whose revenue growth was 14.5 per cent. It is far much higher than revenue growth for this year even in an election year. The reason is simple. You are discouraging tax collection by imposing excessive high taxes which are discouraging business in this country. I heard the Leader of the Majority Party tell us not to play populism. I want to remind Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah that which you call populism and playing to the gallery is what has made the Kenya Kwanza Government that was just thumping its chest to climb down and accept what Kenyans had started saying earlier and yet, it was not listening. Therefore, we will continue playing populism if that is what is going to make Kenya Kwanza listen to us. This Government is giving you with the right hand and taking away with the left hand. Why do I say so? We are being lied to as a country that VAT on bread is going to be reduced. Anyway, it was not there in the first place. You are the ones who came up with this crazy idea. This crazy idea was not in our books. This Government came up with the crazy idea. They are now telling us that we should celebrate when we have caught them. It is like someone who is trying to steal your cow at night. You come out and shout when you hear footsteps of the cow. Then he comes back with a cow and tells you that you should celebrate because I have not stolen it. We have caught you. The people of Kenya have caught Kenya Kwanza when they wanted to introduce taxes like motor vehicle tax that do not exist anywhere in the world. This Government will go down as a motor vehicle tax Government. Look at what the Departmental Committee for Finance and National Planning is trying to do. You come up with a clause of reducing those taxes at the end, on the last paragraph of your Report, after Kenyans have made noise. You are going to introduce a new clause to this Bill called road maintenance levy which was not there. Yet, you are telling us clearly that you have not been able to collect enough levy in this year than the previous year because the price of fuel was high. However, you are proposing to increase it here by Ksh7. I have information that you are going to move it to Ksh9. We must reject those attempts to increase the price of petroleum products when we come to the Committee of the whole House because that will increase even the price of electricity and, therefore, increasing the cost of production."
}