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{
    "id": 1441580,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1441580/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 326,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Alego Usonga, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Samuel Atandi",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker. I want to make a few observations. The anchor document that the Finance Bill draws its contents and which we passed in this House is known as the Medium-Term Revenue Strategy Paper. That document is anchored on two important principles. First, the Finance Bill needs to be predictable and certain. It is anchored in this document because when investors and businessmen want to do business in a country, they must be certain that the tax laws that will prevail are long term, and that they are able to allow them to plan their businesses. Before I joined Parliament, I used to work in the banking sector. We used to engage business people and help them draw business strategies. One of the things that we used to look at was how the tax environment would be in the next three or four years. We passed a Finance Bill last year and even before businesses have taken advantage of the incentives that we provided therein, there is a new Finance Bill which is overturning those benefits. That is why I am opposing this Bill. It is taking away the benefits that we gave to businessmen just the other day. Hon. Deputy Speaker, for instance, in the last Finance Bill, we reduced the import declaration fee because we realised that there were many raw materials that our industries needed that we must import. In this Finance Bill, that tax has been raised by 1 per cent. This is going to hurt the manufacturing sector. I have heard many Members claim that this Finance Bill is good for the manufacturing sector, but that is not the case because this country does not produce a lot of raw materials. That means we are going to import them at a high cost. Secondly, there are some taxes that have been introduced such as VAT on financial services. Only 14 per cent of Kenyans enjoy banking services. In most African and developing countries, about 50 per cent of the citizens enjoy banking services. Introducing 15 per cent VAT on financial services is like telling many Kenyans not to enjoy banking services. This is going to be a serious drawback in our campaign to have many Kenyans banked. This also applies to the new tax that we are introducing on mobile money transfer. There is a tendency by this House to continue taxing money transfer services. Last year, Excise Duty on money transfer services was 15 per cent. We are trying to raise it to 20 per cent. We need to realise that sending money is not production. It is unfair to continue to tax people because they are using mobile money transfer services."
}