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{
    "id": 192713,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/192713/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 182,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Midiwo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 184,
        "legal_name": "Washington Jakoyo Midiwo",
        "slug": "jakoyo-midiwo"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I stand to support the Budget. I want to start by saying that this year's Budget, if implemented, would end up being the friendliest in my time in Parliament. I say so because I saw many things in the Budget that are friendly to the poor people. What I am not sure about is this Government's ability to realise that if it implements the Budget proposals as proposed, then our people would end up benefiting. The people who matter would end up benefiting more than any other time in the history of this country. I want to start by saying that there are some hidden things in the Budget, which we will oppose. The most important one is that in the Budget, the Minister has proposed to increase the base capital of banking institutions from the normal Kshs250 million to Kshs1 billion. We shall oppose that one! We shall even seek to reduce it because the Minister has created very many banks. The economy has created so many banks and micro finance institutions which cannot raise that amount. Therefore, there is need to create many banks like Equity and Family Finance. I thought that, that was mischievous on the part of the Minister! Last year and the year before, he tried to do a similar thing. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we want to tell the Government that putting money into programmes is one thing and implementation is another. That is a key issue we must look at. We must change the way we do things. Last year and the year before, there was the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF). The YEDF was a bad Fund! It was putting good money into a bad project. If you take Kshs50,000 and give it to a group of 12, it is like Kshs4,000 per person. What can Kshs4,000 do in any part of the country and yet they expect people to repay that money? Kenyans are angry at politicians! They are angry at the Government and they do not know the difference between an hon. Member and the Government. We could use this opportunity to help Kenyans distinguish between a Government which is not delivering and hon. Members who may so well want to deliver for them. There was also the Women Enterprise Development Fund (WEDF), which was never disbursed in many parts of the country. Where I come from, if you took Kshs1 million per constituency from WEDF, and put Kshs22 million in Lake Victoria for the removal of water hyacinth, you will create more jobs that taking Kshs1 million to divide among people who can never repay and have no economic activity going on around them. If you took Kshs220 million and June 24, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1345 used it to dredge the Port of Mombasa, you would create more jobs than giving it to a group of people without training them on how to use it. I think we must change on how we invest our money. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to say here - and I have said it to the Minister and in many fora - that the only open fronts in this country where we can invest and get any returns is Lake Victoria and the Port of Mombasa. We need to go to Lamu! It makes common sense that we need to do that as a people. We need to recognise that the Port of Mombasa, other than the taxes we get from the civil servants, gives the highest revenue. It is followed by the money from the fish in Lake Victoria. So, it does not make sense that a whole Budget of this nation does not put any money to try and get rid of the hyacinth in Lake Victoria, which rakes in the third highest amount of money to the Exchequer. That does not make good sense in investments. So, it would make sense that the Government agrees to implement the Fiscal Analysis Bill, so that there could be a Committee to look at the Budget and give advice many months before the Minister comes here just to make pronouncements that hon. Members would so much like to alter."
}