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{
    "id": 1545685,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1545685/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 240,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "expenditure and the difference with what we are going to borrow to meet the gap there in between. If we continue to borrow in figures of beyond four or five percent, then basically what we are doing is that we may appear to be okay now, but it will eventually catch up with us. This is a challenge that I want to pass on to the Committee on Finance and Budget as I know presently before you, there is an amendment to ensure that we move the year. Remember when we moved from nominal terms to percentage of the GDP on the debt anchor, we set 2028 as a year of moving it downward. That is a figure that you are supposed to grow towards. There is now a proposal before the Committee on Finance and Budget to take it to 2030. I am not sure and I cannot see any Member of that Committee in the House to remind us. While I am willing to be persuaded by the National Treasury on why that particular reality needs to be made, there are other things that need to be adopted with. Madam Temporary Speaker, I have just noticed that the Vice-Chairperson of the Committee on Finance and Budget is here. I hope she is paying attention. If you are to grant that, the only way through which I can support such an amendment is if there is a tightening of the fiscal deficit space and it must be accompanied together with it. There must be a clear path that demonstrates and says that, okay, we can grant it to you up to 2030, but it must demonstrate to us, financial year after the other, a figure cast in law. I know how these budget things work as we have been around this Parliament for a while, to understand that as long as figures remain just a discussion and a report, they are never going to be observed. Perhaps, this is the time that we must bring into the national conversation, the fiscal deficit and have it put into law. So that we know in Financial Year 2025/2026, this is the figure beyond which we cannot be allowed to borrow beyond. Madam Temporary Speaker, in the Financial Year 2026/2027 that figure must studiously come down, because there is a scientific way within which you achieve that 55 per cent by 2030. This is just five years that we are talking about. It is not a very long time; the way people want to put it. If we are not careful and if we do not tighten the path, we will find ourselves to be in this House - God granting us life and citizens granting us the opportunity to be here - in 2029, discussing how to move again that 55 per cent to 2034, unless Parliament did its work with diligence. This is my argument - as a representative of the people and as someone who has keenly followed this conversation over the last two terms of Parliament as Kenya 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."
}