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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Sir, for giving me a chance to contribute to this July 4, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1787 Motion. First of all, I will start by commending the Minister for having tailored a jacket for the first time to fit the size of his body as opposed to previous times when he was actually budgeting and planning in anticipation of some other in-flows from the \"big brothers\" who were actually making us suffer from the \"big brother syndrome.\" Mr. Chairman, Sir, as much as I support this Motion, there are a few things that I must give the Minister some sort of warning about. One such thing is the fact that he must start thinking of where to get money to fill in holes we will punch when it comes to fuel levy. We cannot accept that. We must propose an amendment. Fuel levy must come down. As Dr. Khalwale has said, the Minister is using his own figure. An average motorist spends about 15,000 litres of fuel. If we work it out at Kshs3.20, we have Kshs47,700 per year. When you minus Kshs5,000 from Kshs47,700, we actually end up paying a net extra expense to motorists of Kshs42,700. The Minister wants to pretend that he will tell motorists not to charge more fares when the net expenditure is actually high. I would like to ask Minister to start thinking of where to get that money because his move will actually affect the poor people. This also goes down to affect the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. The forests are going to be affected because people will go for cheaper ways of getting fuel. Therefore, if it is a poor man's Budget, we want to see this figure reduced. I believe the Parliament has the capacity to remove this burden from Kenyans. Mr. Chairman, Sir, coming to capital gains tax, this was suspended a while ago. That means that on any appreciation of a capital nature, including a house, we are going to pay tax on the differential. This means that we will discourage people from investing. We do appreciate that assets like houses appreciate faster. Therefore, people may not be able to develop and most Kenyans will always be tenants as opposed to owning houses. Mr. Chairman, Sir, we are talking about zero-rating of products like flour. This Government, and most governments in the world, have had to remove the burden of taxation on people by zero-rating. That means that we can claim import taxes on purchases, but we do not have to charge and sell so that we remove the burden on the final consumer. Ordinarily, this benefit is usually never translated to the final consumer. So, if the Minister has zero-rated that, we want to see the benefit transferred directly to the consumer, so that, that impact is felt among the rural folks. It is commendable for the Minister to introduce tax relief for the people interested in buying bonds to develop infrastructure. That is a positive move. Therefore, we want to even reduce the cost of constructing one kilometre of tarmac road in this country which stands at Ksh60 million as opposed to our neighbouring countries where it is much less than that. Mr. Chairman, Sir, the Minister has actually increased farmhouse deductions. It means any capital expenditure on farmhouse can be recouped in two years. This is a good motivation that we may be able to have our people investing a lot in agriculture. However, I have serious misgivings on one item. I think this was the Minister's deliberate move to have one or so strong political parties, or the parties perceived to be forming the next Government; you find a floodgate of donors flooding into those parties. What Kenyans require is not the Executive to fund political parties. We require a Political Parties Bill as a panacea of this problem of party financing. We cannot guarantee who gives and for what purposes, because we also know that those who \"smell power\" get more advantage than the others. The solution to this is not to allow people to claim tax rebates on income from the Kenya Revenue Authority. After all, who is KRA? The KRA is Government, and they could also say this one never went to a political party. We do not want a situation of political liking and disliking. This will never be a solution to our problems. This is one of the things we must contain sufficiently with time. 1788 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 4, 2006 Mr. Chairman, Sir, it is true that the Minister only takes and sees sugar on his table when he is taking tea. The net gain from a sugar-cane farmer per cane is less than Kshs500. That is what the Minister seeks to tax. If he wants the sugar-cane farmers to go down the drain, he should announce that on a hill-top. Therefore, the Minister should consider this issue of Sugar Development Levy either to encompass all or raise it higher on the importers so that it becomes all-inclusive. Otherwise, there is a danger of the Minister also losing some revenue from here if he does not consider it under his own initiative and propose an amendment to reduce it. It is an encouraging move that the Minister waived tax on diapers. People are actually dying of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. So, we want to encourage young mothers to give us more babies because the joy of a politician is the population. Therefore, this is a welcome move. However, the Minister should have also waived tax on baby food supplements. We also want quality nutrition for our children so that they can grow up as healthy citizens of this country. The issue of charging on energy saving bulbs; there are about 10 per cent of Kenyans who consume electricity. These benefits should have gone to kerosene so as to benefit more people. The Minister, unfortunately, is an accountant, and he just sees figures but does not see the face of a human being. He is a professional colleague, but I want him to have the Kenyan face in front of the figures. Therefore, I recommend that the energy saving bulbs that he has recommended tax reduction on needs to be translated to kerosene. He should also reduce fuel levy as a justification that our people who consume fuel can also benefit from this kind of arrangement. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}