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{
    "id": 1593482,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1593482/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 20,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I thank all the colleagues who took time to speak to this very fundamental Bill regarding making Kenya a globally competitive business hub. Like I mentioned when I was moving this Bill, this is perhaps the most bold of reforms that we have seen in creating Kenya into a competitive business environment and making sure that we can compete globally. I observed that there is nothing out of the ordinary that we are actually doing as a country. We are doing what others have been able to do and ended up being better than us, even in spaces that we excelled in. There are countries that came here in the 1960s to 1980s, copied the things that we were doing and have now done them better than us. Their sectors are performing better than ours thanks to perfect implementation of laws as they are. I listened to many colleagues when they spoke to this Bill. Unfortunately, we do not seem to appreciate that the world is evolving at an extremely fast pace. This is, therefore, presenting us with a need to ensure that as a country, we are doing things as they are done in other parts of the world. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as a country, there seems to be a lack of realization that when those with the means and ways to move the economies of the world sit down in their offices in the posh capitals of the world, they do not look at us from an empathy perspective, but they look at us in form of numbers. How competitive are we? How easy is it to do business in this country? There are so many bureaucratical bottlenecks that reduce us and have made us to be a laughing stock. Mr. Speaker, Sir, you will recall that last year you led us in Mombasa when we had an engagement with the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) and you listened to the kind of things they were telling us. They felt that we, as a country and as Parliament, need to up our game and ensure that we amend the various laws to make them compliant with the demands of the 21st Century. Therefore, I listened to my colleagues who shared their thoughts with quite a number of them proposing various further amendments, which I want to appreciate. I hope that all the Senators who spoke and proposed amendments to this Bill will ensure that they file them, so that we can move towards voting in the Committee of the Whole, which I think will be when we return from recess. I appreciate and urge Senators who may not have had time to contribute to this Bill that it is still important that they read it. This is an extremely important Bill. It is one of the things that we will be extremely proud of later on when we look at reports from our sectoral performance; tourism, horticulture and agriculture subsector. Many of those laws are being amended to make sure that our sectors compete with the very best in the world, including the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) space, which we do so well. Sen. Catherine, we have the ability to be extremely competitive. No offense to Indians and Filipinos, but people keep telling us that that we speak better English than them; that they do not understand why our BPO space employs over and above, probably 100,000 Kenyans while in those two countries, they do at the very minimum, three to four million people, This is something that we can compete with. They have also led us into listening and appreciating the things that we need to change. 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."
}