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{
"id": 245062,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/245062/?format=api",
"text_counter": 192,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Prof. Olweny",
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"speaker": {
"id": 122,
"legal_name": "Patrick Ayiecho Olweny",
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"content": "industry can also benefit from that. Some rural areas lag behind because of lack of 1796 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 4, 2006 electricity. However, I am not happy with the Minister on the issue of Value Added Tax (VAT). He has zero-rated VAT for a number of commodities. But I am not happy about sugar-cane. We have requested the Treasury to zero-rate VAT on sugar-cane quite a number of times. Sugar is an essential commodity. It is found in all our bodies. All animals and plants have sugar. So, sugar is very essential for life. I do not think coffee is essential in life. You can do without drinking coffee! But you will need sugar in milk. The natural milk - mother's milk - has sugar to feed babies. You do not need coffee, tea or some of those other crops to feed babies. So, I am wondering why, year in, year out, we keep on requesting the Treasury to zero-rate VAT on sugar, and there is always a deaf ear! To me, it seems that the Government is not interested in strengthening and revamping the sugar industry. The Government has not done much to improve the sugar industry. Instead, the Government is taxing sugar-cane farmers even more. Farmers are not taxed across the world. Mr. Chairman, Sir, it is only in this country that farmers are taxed. Go across to Uganda; farmers are not taxed! It is the same in the rest of Africa. Instead, farmers are subsidised by their governments. They are given incentives to produce commodities needed in their countries. After all, this country's economy depends on agriculture. Most of our factories are agro-based, either directly or indirectly. The Treasury does not care about that. It is very disappointing! Mr. Chairman, Sir, during the NARC campaigns in 2002, Mr. Kibaki and other politicians, including ourselves, pledged that we would revive the sugar industry. We said that companies that had collapsed would be restructured and revived. That has been done on Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC). Congratulations to the Minister for Livestock and Fisheries Development! I do not know what is happening in the Ministry of Agriculture with regard to the revival of some of the factories that collapsed. Probably, the Minister for Finance is not giving the Minister for Agriculture the much needed support. If that is true, then that is very unfortunate. Mr. Chairman, Sir, I am saying that because some of the measures the Minister for Finance has proposed portray him as if he is fighting the sugar industry. For example, he has increased the Sugar Development Levy. That levy was introduced to help the sugar industry to survive in the middle of a very hostile world economy. Outside there, sugar is very cheap. It is that cheap sugar that is imported into this country so as to undermine the local industry. Mr. Chairman, Sir, our local sugar industry is totally undermined by importation. We are having serious problems. The Sugar Development Levy (SDL) is, on one hand, supposed to advance loans to any investor in the local sugar industry, while at the same time, tax those who are importing cheap sugar into this country. The Minister has proposed to tax the sugar-cane producers, while the sugar importers will go scot-free. That is very unfair to us and we are not happy about it. We shall keep fighting these measures. The Minister for Finance should know that we shall keep talking against it and we shall mobilise the farmers against the measures. If the Minister does not do anything about it, we shall mobilise the voters, come next year. We are only one-and-a-half years away from the general elections, if at all they will not be held before December, 2007. He should be assured that we shall mobilise all the sugar-cane farmers against this Government. The SDL is supposed to be used to create the Sugar Development Fund, which should be loaned out to the farmers, the millers, the transporters or any other investor in the local sugar industry. Unfortunately, this money is kept at the Treasury and not at the Kenya Sugar Board (KSB). If anybody applies for a loan from the Fund, it, of course, passes through the Ministry of Agriculture and then all the papers are taken to the Treasury. That is where they are kept. Many farmers' organisations and individual farmers who have applied for loans have failed to get them. There are so many restrictions in the Treasury, and it is almost impossible to access this July 4, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1797 Fund, which is meant to develop the sugar industry and support the local investors. Mr. Chairman, Sir, this is very discouraging to the farmers who are being taxed. It is discouraging to the millers. One of the sugar companies in my constituency applied for a loan from the SDL two-and-a-half years ago, and it only got a third of the money it had applied for. The Treasury has refused to release the rest of the money. Two farmers' institutions in my constituency applied for loans in 2003 and up to today, not a single cent has been released and yet the Minister talked about the SDL here."
}