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"speaker_name": "Mr. Maore",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I rise to second this Motion and ask hon. Members of this House to allow the introduction of a Bill that the Government has been reluctant to introduce for quite some time. This Bill would allow an opportunity for Parliament to intervene, on behalf of Kenyans, and rescue them from economic sabotage by profiteering cartels of the oil industry. These cartels do not care about what happens. They only care about their bank accounts! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are those of us who believe in a liberal economy. It is possible to liberalise an economy, but not an essential commodity like oil. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will find that all over the world, bank interest rates and oil prices worry and cause sleepless nights to every caring government. However, ours is held hostage by cartels in the banking and oil industries. These are controled mostly by multinationals. In the previous Government there were concerns that a few individuals were involved in the oil industry. Maybe, this current Government should have a chance of reining in these profiteering cartels. However, its members are also keen to own banks, and have some interest in the oil industry. Therefore, they are not keen to rescue the public. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Act, which talks about unfair trade practices, just exists in writing. Every now and then, you will hear the Minister threatening to invoke it. If you ask him why he does not do so, he will whisper to you, along the corridors, how powerful these people are. What we are facing now is a situation similar to what is in the biblical world, where it is prophesied that one day the lion and the lamb will lie together without harming each other. The Government would like to unleash on Kenyans the oil cartels and assume they have no teeth to bite them. It is high time the Government reined in these cartels as a matter of national and economic security. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will find that in the entire Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region, it is not possible for our county to have any competitive product just because of one sector; that is the energy sector. You will find that the cement produced in Kenya cannot compete with that produced in Egypt. The reason? The cost of energy! It has made it impossible for any of our products to be competitive in this region as a whole. Why should we have cheap energy in countries around us which do not produce oil, and yet in Kenya its cost is so high? This is the situation, yet Kenya is the point of entry to Uganda, 3492 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 8, 2006 Burundi and Rwanda. This is a problem that we should worry about. It is important for this House to arise and support the introduction of a Bill to introduce price controls. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is possible to have fixed prices; for example, minimum and maximum prices, such that whatever prices you declare in your invoices when you are importing crude oil or refined products, you should not charge beyond a certain percentage. If, for example, you are importing one litre of oil, you should not be allowed to make 100 per cent profit because you would be sabotaging the economy. If we are worried about the economy, we should contain this behaviour. We liberalised the oil industry, just like the banking industry, a few years back. But upon reflection, you will find that the behaviour by the oil industry has not been liberalised. It would be liberalised if, whenever people import goods, they sell them at a price which they feel is appropriate for them, but not where there is uniformity, as the Mover has clearly put it. Finally, when we invoke the Monopolies Act, we should also have fall-back position whereby the Government makes a deliberate effort of financing or getting a partner to put up money to the National Oil Corporation of Kenya (NOCK), so that NOCK could even have been empowered to buy the BP Oil Company when it was being sold early this year. Instead of allowing the Shell Company to acquire BP, the Treasury could have raised the required amount of money to buy the company and have many outlets than the few outlets that Shell has now. The Government needs to put its money where its mouth is if we have to strengthen our economy or have control over our economy. Let us have an expanded NOCK, which could maintain strategic reserves that we force even private companies to maintain. We can do this with our money and make sure that the prices are not exploitative to our public. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is also no seriousness in the Government in some of the strategic sectors like this. For example, we have had an acting Minister for Energy for now nearly ten months. Planning and energy are two enormous dockets and you cannot have one Minister running both of them. Then you end up with civil servants running the Ministry, but without anybody to run the policy bit. They are implementing things that they do not know, but, just by the grace of God, the country is rolling on its own. We need to see some action and the best way to start is by bringing this Bill to the House, maybe, early next year. Between now and the time the Bill will be published, the oil industry should behave, so that by the time we will be passing the Bill, we will see sense in what they will be doing and also slow our action. For the time being, we should not trust the international oil cartels that have destroyed and caused havoc in our economy. With those few remarks, I beg to second."
}