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{
    "id": 227277,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/227277/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 201,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Wambora",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 285,
        "legal_name": "Martin Nyaga Wambora",
        "slug": "martin-wambora"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this April 10, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 477 wonderful opportunity to comment on this important Report of the 4th Session of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, held in Vienna. May I start outright with a general comment that the ACP-EU regional co-operation is critical and important. It is, indeed, the future. The national trade within the nation is not enough. We need to go beyond Kenya. With the ACP-EU co-operation we have now come to the limit in a way. The significance of the ACP-EU is that we have a larger market. The EU on its own is only second to the United States of America (USA) in terms of importance. This is where we should put our focus, because they are our traditional markets. The Kenyan major exports include coffee, tea and horticultural products, like flowers. The EU provides us with one of the most developed markets for our products. But I want to issue a challenge to our future Kenyan delegations, because I am not convinced that the current ones are doing enough. They are not doing enough because they should take the challenges which the ACP-EU Co-operation is really experiencing. One of the major challenges is the issue of value addition for the products that I have talked about, including coffee and tea. We have a problem because when we try to market them, we face both tariff and non-tariff barriers. An EU country like Germany has literally discouraged value-addition for coffee while Britain has literally rejected value-addition for tea. Their excuses are that this is going to undermine the jobs which the value-addition will create in those countries. Here, we must be firm. We must not just accept the status quo, because as long as we continue accepting the status quo, we are heading nowhere. We produce the best coffee and tea in the world, yet our farmers do not get the benefit of these wonderful products simply because the two countries that I have mentioned above and others are not accepting our value-added products. So, what do we do when it comes to that? These are the issues which should be addressed by parliamentarians and other Kenyan officials when they attend these conferences rather than just talking in general terms. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are now aware that, the USA is ready to buy our value-added tea and coffee. We are also aware that China is ready to buy our value-added coffee. We should bypass Germany and Britain because they have not co-operated with us and go to these major markets directly. We must not just accept the status quo when it is not serving us well! The second challenge to the Kenyan delegation in future is the issue of cheap imports from the European Union (EU). They want us to open our markets completely. We must resist that move because our local industries will be threatened. They are still infant industries and we must be very careful in terms of accepting to open up our markets when they are not allowing us to add value to our products in our country. This is a situation which makes us continue exporting our products as commodities when, in fact, they should be specialty products. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not want to take a lot of time. I want to mention the third challenge which our Kenyan delegation should, in future, emphasize on, and this is the issue of global warming. We know that EU countries and the USA are the biggest culprits when it comes to global warming and atmospheric pollution, yet they are trying to resist our flowers saying that they are contributing to global warming. In fact, Africa as a whole contributes only 2 per cent of the atmospheric pollution. They are the major culprits and they are now trying to give us an excuse so as not to buy our flowers. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I beg to support the Report so that we can adopt it."
}