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"id": 240967,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/240967/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o",
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"legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
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"content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am very happy to speak after my dear friend, hon. Mwiraria because he has said some things that I would want to draw the Minister's attention to. Yesterday, I came into the House when the Minister was making his contribution, and so I missed part of his speech. However, I had the pleasure of getting the HANSARD of his speech and I read it very carefully. While I commend the Minister for having contributed handsomely in the area of trade and trade negotiations, I would like to suggest, constructively, to him that in the area of industry, his Ministry has done very poorly for the very reasons that hon. Mwiraria has raised. If you look at the Minister's speech, the questions of research, development and manufacturing are only handled in two paragraphs. The rest of the speech is on trade matters. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, secondly, at this point in time, four years into the NARC Government - now NARC-Kenya Government - we are talking about preparing a national industrial master-plan. That, I think, is something that should have come in 2003, so that the Minister could have an opportunity of implementing that industrial master-plan. That is on page 19 of his contribution. The issue of value addition is a critical point for industrialisation in this country. If you look at the economy of only one province in South Africa - Gauteng Province, it has a budget which is three times more than the Budget of Kenya. The economy of South Africa is, perhaps, 30 times bigger than Kenya! I do not know why. In South Africa, there is very little investment in manufacturing. Why? Because it is cheaper to import goods from outside rather than manufacture them in the country. So, investments are going into the service sector and real estate. If investments in an economy like that are going into the service sector and real estate, do you really think you can go into manufacturing in Kenya seriously? Unless, you do what my friend, Mr. Mwiraria said - revert to autarky--- If we implement what Mr. Mwiraria suggested, then the Minister wasted three years in World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations. That is because WTO is ipso-facto opposed to autarky. So, at this point in time, and I heard somebody in this House talk about globalisation--- Is it historically possible to develop through autarky? Whereas I clearly understand the logic of Mr. Mwiraria's contribution, it is not logically possible at this point in time to resort to autarky because of historical problems. Why do I say that? It is because of the world in which we live; a world where problems of trade cannot be solved the way WTO is going about it. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me say the following: If we begin from the point of view of value addition, and then respond creatively to our history, it shows that this country's biggest trade partners are in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). It can only enhance contribution to that region by more value addition here. Let me give the Minister a good example of where we can begin in this country. We made that point in the economic recovery strategy for wealth and employment creation. In that strategy, we targeted arid and semi-arid areas for a good reason! That is where Kenya can get comparative advantage in getting value addition for its economy today. If we ignore arid and semi-arid lands, we are not going to improve our industrialisation. Why do I say that? At the moment, the Republic of South Africa is manufacturing cars. The Mercedes Benz cars that you drive in this city, thinking that you imported from Germany, are actually made in South Africa under licence from Germany. They are demanding leather goods astronomically. Indeed, the production of hides and skins is actually domiciled in the Horn of Africa, part of which is northern Kenya. What South Africa is doing is opening up a huge cattle ranch in Sudan, so that they can get hides and skins to be used in their auto-industry. What could be July 26, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2399 better for Kenya than to take advantage of that and produce hides and skins for the South African market? We should not export hides and skins directly. We should value-add them here and then sell to South Africa. We shall be expanding our outreach for the COMESA market, including South Africa. Rather than lament like Mr. Angwenyi was doing today, that we have a negative trade balance with South Africa--- South Africa has been begging us to have a bi-national commission to deal with that issue but, up to today, as I speak to you--- The Minister knows what effort we put to get that bi-national commission going on! But it is not going on. Yet, that is our most potential market for enhancing value addition in this country. Let us begin with a concrete step. I am afraid the Minister's contribution in terms of industrialisation, research and development are too general. They are not specific. His speech on both research, development and manufacturing could have been given in the year 2000, 2001 and 2002. It is in no way responding to the conjuncture of today, that could tell us exactly how we are going to increase value addition, so that industrialisation can take place in this country. That is one of the major deficiencies that are in the Minister's proposals. But that can be improved if you look much more concretely at the historical conjuncture that we find ourselves in, in the COMESA region and Africa, in particular. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister, in his paper, refers rather generally to the Numerical Machining Complex. The Minister knows my passion about the Numerical Machining Complex. This is now the fourth year into the \"NARC/NARC-(K) Government\"! I am afraid that, that is something he should have taken up, when we spoke about it. Do you realise that in this country, we have the base for capital goods industry? The only other place which has it is Libya and South Africa. The Libyan one was bombed by the United States of America (USA), when they claimed that the Libyans were trying to manufacture nuclear weapons. So, it is only Kenya and South Africa which has that thing. But the Kenyan one is lying dormant because of lack of social imagination and what I call a mercantile attitude in the Government towards industrialisation. That is something that should be taken with the urgency it requires. That is because it is at the centre of political economy and industrialisation of this country. In the 1990s, we lost a lot of our industrial capacity in this nation because of the Goldenberg scam. That sent interest rates sky-rocketing. That meant that anybody in the private sector who had borrowed money found it too expensive to service. So, many of our industries went under. It was called \"de-industrialisation\". In the economic recovery strategy for wealth and employment creation, our aim was to recover that lost ground by restoring an enabling environment in which that de-industrialisation process could be reversed. Very little attention has been paid to that economic recovery strategy for wealth and employment creation. Investors in the home market were coming to us; appealing that those things should be done. But, up to now, nothing has been done! When I was a graduate student, Prof. Robert Forsyth told me a very simple truth; that, no country on the face of the earth has ever industrialised without, first and foremost, developing the home market. When England went around looking for raw materials, it is because the English home market required that raw material as inputs. So, the first thing that we need to do is develop our home market. We should not think that we are going to developing by exports only. The home market must be developed. In that regard, the Ministry of Trade and Industry should help the Ministry of Finance and other Ministries by ensuring that income thrives at all levels in this country, to enable the development of the home market. That is not just the responsibility of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, but the Government as a whole. With those few remarks, I beg not to support."
}