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"id": 216990,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Kenneth",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Finance",
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"content": " Thank you very much, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. First, I am grateful to hon. Members who have spoken over the last few days, while contributing to the debate on the Budget. A lot has been said and I want to acknowledge all the contributions that have been made by hon. Members. I will, therefore, touch on a few things that have been said. It is a pity that the Opposition Front Bench is not represented. We have been told that this is an election Budget and I want to demystify that. This is a Budget for the country. It is a Budget that will stretch towards June next year when elections will have been held. It is a Budget that, in the unlikely event that the Opposition will be in Government, they will have to use it for the next six months. Therefore, the Budget is for the country and I would have wished for a little more scrutiny of the Budget, instead of just merely dismissing it as an election Budget. This Budget has been aligned to the vision of 2030. The Vision of 2030 is a vision for this country. It is where we would like to be. We are this far and we want to move to that position. Unless we put policies that will encourage a growth rate that will make us achieve a vision, then we are not doing any service to this country. Some of the countries that have been quoted here like South Korea, Singapore and so on, have been stories of a vision that has come true. It is important that, as hon. Members, we support the Vision 2030 so that we can achieve what we would like to see as a wonderful thing for Kenyans. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Singapore story went over 25 years. The Malaysian story went over 20 years. Those visions worked, because people worked towards a vision of their country. It is, therefore, important that we do whatever we can do to ensure that our country remains the winner in all the policies that we have brought forward. I know there has been fear that there will be increases in prices because the cost of plastics will go up, now that duty has been put. First we must agree that the cost of Excise Duty on plastics is a sin tax. It is a sin tax in the sense that plastics have done more dangerous things to this country than gains. In fact, I have done a soul-searching when I heard that one of the sugar companies wanted to increase the price of sugar because we are changing from plastics. But to say the least, the cost of paper is still cheaper than the cost of plastics. I had an occasion to speak to the producers of paper in the name of Pan African Paper Paper Mills and I asked them what the actual cost is. They told me that to that particular distributor of sugar, they had quoted both the price of paper and plastics which they already had because they were packing in plastics, and the price of paper was actually cheaper than that of plastics. So, we need, as leaders, to encourage those people who have been packaging in plastics to turn to paper which is cheaper and which is much safer for this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the issue of equality has arisen. I am taken a little aback that some of the people who have complained, especially about infrastructure, are some of the biggest beneficiaries of that infrastructure. I had an occasion to listen to Mr. ole Ntimama yesterday talking about the state of infrastructure in this country. Looking at this current Budget, Narok North is one of the major beneficiaries in terms of infrastructure. The road from Maai Mahiu going all the way to Narok costing this Government almost Kshs5 billion is in Mr. ole Ntimama's constituency, yet he has the courtesy to come and say that there is inequality in infrastructure. We have Kshs5 billion out of Kshs61 billion for infrastructure going towards a key road in this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this morning we listened to the hon. Member for 2118 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 27, 2007 Tinderet talking about infrastructure and the arteries of roads in this country. In this year's Budget, Kshs9 billion has been earmarked for the road from Nakuru to Malaba which is what Mr. Kosgey was complaining about this morning. It also appears that we have not acquainted ourselves with what is in this Budget. It is important that when we look at equality, we look at the four key sectors that have taken most of the money. The first one is roads, which I have dealt with and I have spoken about. The other one is in health which every hon. Member would like to see going back to the grassroots. We must commend the Ministry because the days when people used to go and look for drugs in hospitals and could not find them, are long past us. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other sector that took a big chunk of this Budget is education which cuts across the Board. The other one is security. If you take those four major sectors which take nearly 70 per cent of the entire Budget, they cut across this country. So, when we speak of inequality, I really do not understand what we are talking about. I am sure if we did an analysis for health and education for every region, we will see that it cuts across the entire country. There is the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) to supplement all this and that is another area of equality. The more the taxes go up, the more the CDF goes up. Therefore, every individual Member of Parliament is also able to supplement or complement what the Government is doing. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, therefore, I want to encourage hon. Members to acquaint themselves with what the Budget is really saying. Let us not politicise it. Let us look at the Budget as a policy document that is able to sent us forward. Let us not sectionalise this country. This is our country and I expect that an important item like the Budget is for the entire country. I would hate to imagine that at Treasury we would sit down to look at a certain section and say that, that is not deserving. What would be good for this country is the entry of very good politics that would make our country go forward. Virtually, everybody in this House is a parent. So, we are not only talking about ourselves but our children. We want our children to have a better place than we found it ourselves. The only way we can make Kenya better is by having policies that will take us forward. That is why I said that it is very easy to dismiss this Budget and say that it is an election Budget. But in that unlikely event that, that Bench was to take over, they will have to use this Budget for six months from January. Therefore, it would have been very important for that Opposition Bench to look at those six months in which they would inherit, again, in that unlikely event. So, it is very important that we are able to articulate, scrutinize and have a way to move forward. With those few remarks, I beg to move."
}