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{
    "id": 234802,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/234802/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 193,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Kimunya",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Finance",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 174,
        "legal_name": "Amos Muhinga Kimunya",
        "slug": "amos-kimunya"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like to continue from where I had reached in terms of this Bill. I had explained the background to this Bill and got to a point of discussing the department of insurance. To perform its role effectively, the Department of Insurance needs to recruit and retain highly qualified and experienced technical staff. This has not been possible in view of the various salaries and other terms of employment offered by the private sector. In most African countries, including our neighbouring countries of Tanzania and Uganda, this has been dealt with through the creation of independent regulatory authorities. Here in Kenya, a similar approach has been taken in creation of autonomous regulatory bodies within the financial sector such as the Capital Markets Authority that oversees our capital markets, the Retirement Benefits Authority that is also doing well in terms of regulating the retirement benefits scheme, the Central Bank of Kenya in terms of financial sector and basically many other sectors of our economy. Besides strengthening the human resources, the Department of Insurance requires capacity- building in equipment and technology and the office also receives enormous information from the market that is necessary for the regulation. We believe that this information can be adequately captured, analysed and appropriately utilised if modern information technology is used. With a constrained Government Budget, it is not possible to equip the department adequately like other supervisory bodies elsewhere. For instance, many other supervisory bodies in Africa are able to monitor their insurance sectors through a network computer system. For our Department of Insurance to be well updated on the current insurance developments, supervisory and staff training requirements, there is need to be affiliated to other insurance bodies world wide. This, however, has not been possible because of the budget constraints and red-tape. Hence, our department has been left behind in many ways. From inception to date, the department has been losing its top officers to the private sector once they are qualified. It has operated only, basically, as a training ground to the insurance industry because of the better pay offered in the private sector. For instance, a qualified chartered insurance practitioner, of which I must confirm that the department of insurance office has seven of them, is paid a couple of times less than his counterpart in the private sector. It is, therefore, not possible to retain such officers within the mainstream civil service. Much as we are happy that the civil service provides the required resources for the sector, the migration out of the civil service renders the effectiveness and efficiency of the department, as more and more officers leave the civil service and move to the industry, at the expense of lack of manpower within the Commissioner's Office. In view of the above, the challenge, therefore, is to transform the Department of Insurance into an 3614 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 14, 2006 autonomous, self-funding and self-administered and independent financial regulator."
}