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{
    "id": 1554341,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1554341/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 195,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Buuri, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Mugambi Rindikiri",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " I stand to support this amendment. One of our Government's programmes is to enhance manufacturing. We have to look at the various inputs a manufacturer requires to achieve this. Of course, electricity is one of them, requiring various components. The requirement for firewood is dwindling. Our youth want to start businesses in rural areas, and we need to create self-employment opportunities in the country. We need to enhance research and connect many people with electricity because they deserve to see power in their homes. The cost of importing transformers is draining our foreign exchange, yet we have many electrical engineering graduates who need to be seen to be employed somewhere. They need to be encouraged. We need to reduce the cost of production of goods and services because it will have a multiplier effect. We need new high-capacity transformers to enhance the capacity to maximise power in our rural areas. We should encourage the Last Mile Connectivity Project. Therefore, anything that would reduce the cost of manufacturing and transformers should be supported. I thank the Leader of the Majority Party and the Chairman of the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning for finding it proper and appropriate to do away with excise duty when the Government wants to connect as many people as possible to electricity. Other than the excise duty on transformers, the excise duty on so many other items should be removed to enhance local production capacity. This is sector-specific because it addresses manufacturing transformers. We will enhance productivity once this cost is reduced. We will also encourage manufacturers not to be confined to Nairobi only. We would like to invest where we come from because we also have the capacity to produce transformers. If we remove the excise duty, we will import important items of manufacturing transformers. I support and tell this House that it is high time we supported the Government in delivering its mandate of encouraging local production. Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker."
}