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{
    "id": 1545138,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1545138/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 188,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "I am, however, proud of this Senate. Immediately when we came to this Senate, we decided to review the Public Finance Management Act to come up with sustainable debt management. I remember we passed a law in this House that directed the National Treasury that if it is borrowing, we must first look at our debt portfolio and make sure that the Present Value (PV) to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of our debt does not go beyond 55 per cent. That is what we passed in this House. However, between June last year and today, our debt bumped to Kshs10.58 trillion. The PV to GDP ratio is at 63 per cent as at now. Some theorists in the National Treasury might come and argue that it is not possible to achieve a 55 per cent PV to GDP ratio of our debt stock because of some numbers they keep on bringing to this House in the Budget Policy Statement (BPS). They say that is a target that can only be met in the Financial Year 2028/2029. I am not persuaded with this. I am a student of the late President Hon. Mwai Kibaki's free primary school education. During his time, I never knew that I would become anything close to a Member of Parliament (MP) in this country. However, at that time, the PV to GDP ratio of our debt stock was at a whooping two per cent. That means there is something that has become rogue in this country. The debt of this country is not spent on development, but on the mouth of people in power. The money we are borrowing never gets anything done. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, how comes we are proposing to raise a variety of money to Kshs4.3 trillion in the current BPS? We want to burden the country again, that out of the Kshs4.3 trillion, the cost of our debt will be Kshs1.97 trillion. That means, if you round off that number, we are going to be paying Kshs2 trillion. We raised Kshs4.3 trillion to pay Kshs2 trillion in debt. Are we slaves in our own country? Are we fine being slaves in our own country? We have the PFM Act that has guided us that in structuring our debt. We must also look at how we make our Domestic Debt Market (DDM) sustainable. Hon. Sen. Mungatana has indicated that our DDM is currently depressed, bleeding and haemorrhaging. The DDM is completely unsustainable."
}