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{
    "id": 1545164,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1545164/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 214,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Okiya Omtatah",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "worse, not a single domestic debt has been approved by Parliament. Look at the Appropriations Act; there is none. Somehow the executive does not implement the budget. When you look at the Statement of Annual Revenue and Actual Revenue and Net Expenditure, which is published at the end of every month, you encounter this animal called domestic debt. If you look at the budget, there is no domestic debt. Treasury bills are supposed to act like an overdraft. Where the KRA delays submitting enough money to the Government, the Government should issue Treasury bills to fill the gap. By law, Treasury bills must be paid within 12 months. They cannot become debt. Madam Temporary Speaker, under the Public Finance Management Act, all borrowing must support a defined capital project or development project. Nonetheless, you will find that we are borrowing a lot of money from the domestic market without the approval of Parliament. Where does this money go when it is not even budgeted for? Why are we borrowing this money? This money runs in billions of shillings. I wish our screens were working. I would have beamed my calculations onto that screen, so that Kenyans could see how they are being scammed in the name of taking public debt. I have done a graph, and you realise one of the interesting things is that our debt spikes every time we have a handshake. This means that the mechanisms of oversight are lost. Every year since we have had a handshake, there has been a spike in reckless borrowing and reckless expenditure by the Government. I hope it does not happen today. I do not know whether we are allowed or not, but I would have loved to be projecting some of these figures on these screens that we have here so that all Kenyans can see exactly how we are being messed up and how we are being hurt. Another painful fact is that the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), which is constantly demanding more powers, has never audited our debt portfolio. I do not understand why they cannot just let the police, the Economic Crimes Unit of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), do their work. One of the things that has made our debt shoot up from 2014 is because Parliament amended the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act to allow for money borrowed to be kept offshore, contrary to Article 206, which requires that all money borrowed must be kept in the Consolidated Fund. Therefore, under the discretion of the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Economic Planning, they can borrow money and keep it in offshore accounts. That is one of the issues affecting us. When you look at the total amount of debts that we have borrowed, many people discuss in terms of the actual figures borrowed. However, if you factor in the cost of the loans and interest on the loans, you get a shocking figure. Right now, we are standing at Kshs18 trillion when you take those factors in. That is totally unsustainable for us. I have seen in this statement projections of paying Kshs1.7 trillion, Kshs2.7 trillion in debt and what have you. Those kinds of projections are not good for this country. There are existential threats to this country. You cannot have a budget of say Kshs3.7 trillion and spend Kshs1.7 trillion repaying debts. Only Kshs700 billion of the Kshs1.7 trillion goes to paying off the principal sum and Kshs1 trillion paying interest. That cannot work. It will sink this country. 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."
}