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"id": 183168,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/183168/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kenneth",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030",
"speaker": {
"id": 167,
"legal_name": "Peter Kenneth",
"slug": "peter-kenneth"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity. I know that we will be replying officially through the Minister, but I just want to share a few experiences with my colleagues. It is important that we appreciate the kind of issues that we have in the Ministry and take it upon ourselves as Parliamentarians to play the role of oversight, to be able to help ourselves. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the previous hon. Members who spoke and, notably, Mr. Midiwo, who is a member of the Departmental Committee on Finance, Planning and Trade, is very well aware of certain facts that leave the Ministry tied. Despite all the good plans that the Ministry has, ours can only be planning. Implementation is done by the line Ministries. I want to October 22, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2949 give a few facts. The Budget that we passed here amounted to about Kshs580 billion. Out of which, Kshs480 billion will come from Gross Revenue collection and Kshs100 billion from donors. So, we are talking about Kshs580 billion without Appropriation-in-Aid (A-in-A). Looking at this Budget, you will see that the component for development is Kshs180 billion, while the cost of running the Government is Kshs400 billion. So, we keep on talking of developing when the big chunk of our money factored in the Budget goes towards Recurrent Expenditure. If we want to develop this country, we have to think of how we can reduce the cost of Government and allocate a bigger slice to the cost of development. Otherwise, we will spend time here as Parliament. We will continue speaking, and we will not progress. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, that is why I understand hon. Members' feelings when they say that it is important that we increase the CDF allocation. Those are the funds that will be used to implement projects at the grassroots level. The issue of increasing the CDF allocation is an issue which Parliament can discuss and agree upon. We know that Constitutionally, any Bill to increase any amount of expenditure requires Presidential assent. Hearing remarks made by the Chairman of the CDF Select Committee, I was astonished, because he should be on the forefront in encouraging and seeing that the right legislation on the CDF is actually discussed by this House. It is very easy to come here and criticise the percentage. As I said, I was astonished that the person criticising is the Chairman of the CDF Select Committee, and yet he should be on the forefront. Secondly, I want to encourage hon. Members that within the CDF, we need to have a harmonised way of developing this country. At the moment, what we have is 210 visions of 210 Members of Parliament. Therefore, I want to appeal to Members of Parliament. Now that we have Vision 2030, why can we not align ourselves to Vision 2030 and develop certain basic requirements for our country, which are based on it, so that we grow the country together. It will be pointless to give every constituency CDF money when we are all developing differently, and not in the same direction. So, it is important that, we, as Members of Parliament, align ourselves to Vision 2030. Thirdly, in as much as our Ministry is required to do the actual planning, a lot of that work has been undertaken, but it is Members of Parliament who scrutinise every Ministry. I alluded to a figure of Kshs180 billion being the amount voted for development this year. We have 40 Ministries. When we allocate those 40 Ministries money for development, we are, probably spreading too thin to actually achieve anything out of the money we have voted for development. Therefore, if we really want to grow, we have to look at areas of priority, work and decide on them. If it is infrastructure, we should say that we want to sort out, in one financial year, infrastructure problems and go to the Development Vote for infrastructure. That is the only way we will grow. A lot has been alluded to the poverty index. I have a lot of faith in the Kenya Bureau of Statistics (KBS) and the officers in the Ministry. Any research has its own data. They have data backing their own research. It is important, if there are doubts, therefore, not to politicise it. Let us look at the data and say: \"This data is not correct.\" I would like to see any Member of Parliament coming to tell me that he has looked at the data---"
}