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"id": 1451038,
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"content": "bad. It was a good year because our economy grew by 5.6 per cent. As we speak, the last figures released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) in regard to price levels was 4.6 per cent. That is what we call inflation. In addition, our currency has been performing quite well. It gained massively this year – by close to 20 per cent against the US Dollar, and even much more if you consider the last six months. In terms of regional currencies, we have also seen an appreciation of our domestic currency. Even with the challenges we are having in our country, what is surprising is that all those parameters have proven to be very resilient. We have not seen our local currency losing ground. This shows that the appreciation of the Kenyan Shilling is grounded on fundamental reasons. That is why the price regarding our local currency has been sticky even when we have challenges in Kenya. Therefore, we must all be proud of Kenya as a country. Whereas we have challenges, I assure the people of Kenya that economic-wise, using globally accepted parameters like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), inflation levels and the strength of the local currency, we should be proud of our country. As an economy, Kenya has proven very resilient. Areas of cuts are some of the things we have had to relook. So that we get as many people as possible participating, I do not want to take too much time today. Is more borrowing good or bad for the country? Outrightly, my answer is that it is not right for our country to continue borrowing – especially increasing our level of borrowing. Why? The problem we have as a country is based on the fact that, in previous years, we borrowed more than we ought to have borrowed. The weight is now on us. I was talking to Hon. Maryanne Keitany just here. She is very mad because she feels that some of the Budget expenditure lines they were considering in the Departmental Committee on Trade, Industry and Cooperatives ought not to have been reduced. That is the situation. I am glad my sister, Hon. Maryanne, is listening. This is how it is. I also conversed with the Chairperson of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives. I saw him this morning. Kenyans should know that this is our country. The bare fact is that in the current financial year, we will, as a country, spend Ksh1.002 trillion on payment of interest rates alone. They are interest rates incurred from domestic and foreign borrowing. We will be spending over Ksh1 trillion. Precisely, we will be spending Ksh1.002 trillion. We may come here and read a Budget of Ksh3.88 trillion, as we are doing today but the fact of the matter is that we are already paying interest rates in the sum of Ksh1 trillion even before we finish reading. The money we pay to meet our pension obligations to retired civil servants is over Ksh200 billion. Therefore, before we even start negotiating about which projects to be done, Ksh1.002 trillion is off the table. We also had to do something unprecedented, which I will mention later. Out of that Budget, Ksh380 billion is equitable share. If we do the math, we see what remains. More surprisingly, when we talk about debt servicing, it is not just a component of interest rate. There is also the component of the principal. The entire expenditure on debts is Ksh1.8 trillion. What we have been doing for the past year is that out of Ksh100 collected by KRA, Ksh61 has been going to debt servicing and we are left to grapple with what to do with the remainder. That is the reality of the matter. Whoever is in the driving seat, whoever is at the National Treasury, and whoever is in whichever other position, those are the grim realities. What we have done this time round – I am saying ‘we’ because, as a country, we came together and decided that we needed to rationalise our budget – is that we have done something unprecedented. One unprecedented thing is to bring to the House a Supplementary Budget even before the lapse of a month following the passage of the Budget. The second unprecedented thing that we have done is the kind of budget cuts that we have undertaken. The cuts have been made at The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}