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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I have a few comments to make. The Minister, in this Bill, had some good intentions in support of the poor in this country. However, some of the intentions are not very good, particularly the one on zero-rating welding machines. It is a good idea because it will promote the jua kali sector, although some of the machines they use for welding are still very expensive. We have made the welding machines affordable, but the rest of the equipment that they need are is still very expensive. That should have been addressed, although metals are used by many other kind of people. Computers, today, have become part and parcel of our everyday lives. We use them in almost everything we do. Zero-rating of VAT on computers is a good move by the Minister because he will encourage primary schools to buy computers so that our children can become computer literate in their early stages. There is the controversial Clause 37, which relates to Constitutional Officers' Allowances. If we allow the Minister to get away with it, it will set a bad precedence in this country, that any Finance Minister can touch things that relate to the Constitution. The Minister may get away with a move to amend the Constitution in the name of a Finance Bill. This should be discouraged and we should not allow it to happen because it is not good for the future. We may have other Finance Ministers in the future who may not have good intentions when they bring Bills with such amendments. They may amend more serious Sections of our Constitution. It is my view, since this is a dangerous move, to note that it is not safe, and therefore, it should be removed from the Bill. In the Minister's Budget Speech, and in this Finance Bill, there is a problem of Sugar Development Fund (SDF) and the importation of sugar. It is encouraging to note that the Minister back-tracked from that and said that Clauses 60 and 61 should be deleted from the Bill. The SDF 3348 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 1, 2006 was meant to promote sugar-cane production in this country which had suffered a lot during the former regime. That is why hon. Members, in the former Parliament, saw it necessary to come up with an Act of Parliament which would help revamp the sugar industry. If we try to revive things that happened six years ago during the previous regime, which the previous Parliament helped put in place, we would bring down the sugar industry which has been suffering for many years. In this Government's regime, there are still many things which have to be done. We all know that we have the COMESA safeguards which help us nurse the sugar industry because it has serious problems. That is why COMESA countries gave us safeguards so that we could come up with a way of making the industry more profitable to the farmers, millers, transporters and all stakeholders who are involved in it. The Minister's move would have meant taxing farmers. We have said it every now and then, in this House, that farmers should not be taxed. Farmers should actually be supported. They should be subsidised, though we feel jittery when we use the word \"subsidies.\" Other countries have come up with better terms to support the production of farmers. They call it production support system to farmers. Why do we still dream of taxing farmers? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, Kenya is an agricultural country. If that is so, that means that agriculture is the mainstay of our economy. Therefore, we must come up with ways to ensure that the key players in the agricultural sector are supported and not taxed. That is what SDF would have done so that we do support farmers. Sugar-cane farmers are making losses instead of profits because of the taxes they pay in terms of labour, fertilisers and land preparations which involve use of tractors and other machinery. Everything is expensive to the farmer. At the end of the day, after harvesting the cane, they get very little profit. The people who make profits in the sugar industry are sugar importers. It is importers who make ends meet in this country. So, when the Minister proposed that he would remove the controls on sugar importation in this country, it was very unpalatable, especially to some of us who are very concerned about sugar-cane matters. The Finance Ministry has caused us many problems when it comes to sugar importation. I know the Minister joined the Ministry recently. However, he may not know, but the officers in his Ministry, we believe, have been colluding with importers, causing us a lot of problems. So, when it was proposed that it would be controlled by the Finance Ministry---"
}