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{
    "id": 1545127,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1545127/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 177,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr) Oburu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 194,
        "legal_name": "Oburu Ngona Odinga",
        "slug": "oburu-odinga"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I rise to contribute to this very important subject of debt management in our country. I must from the outset admit that there is no country which does not have debt. All countries, including the richest ones, borrow money. However, it is not a question of borrowing; it is the question of management; managing the funds that you borrow. Most of the countries in our continent of Africa were classified by the developed world as Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) of the world. Kenya used to belong to that classification. We were Highly Indebted Poor Country of the world. When you are highly indebted and poor, the risk of investing in you and giving you debt or loans is high. Therefore, the tendency in the financial world is to make borrowed money very expensive. If you make it expensive for poor countries, the result is that they will not pay. Consequently, they will default. This is why the international financial arrangement was made in such a way that if you fall under the HIPC, you would get cheaper loans with long grace periods of repayment. However, you still have to pay. Therefore, when you get access to such loans, you do not access the commercial window in the international markets. Our country moved out of that bracket called HIPC. We were then classified as developing. Now, developing means we have access to the commercial window. That means we can borrow money from the commercial window. This is a very dangerous thing. When you are upgraded to access the commercial window, then it means that you have to be very careful. A lot of countries would like to give you money. They would like to give you money like the Euro bond but that is money which is to be paid in very short periods and these are people who are in a hurry to make money. Therefore, we have to train our people when they do financial negotiations with these people. They are very smart and they have a lot of expertise in negotiating some of these loans. Some of the loans are skewed, even with policies that are there. Some of the policies were there when I was in the Ministry responsible. One of those policies stated, 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."
}