Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 245464,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/245464/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 136,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Sambu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 137,
        "legal_name": "Alfred B. Wekesa Sambu",
        "slug": "alfred-sambu"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity. The Minister has been congratulated because this was his first Budget Speech. I want to talk about tax collection. Collection of Income Tax has improved. Recently, the Government admitted that one supermarket chain has collected VAT from its sales but has not remitted Kshs18 billion to the Government. It is a disaster! We are using a system whereby we rely on the trust of retailers. How do you rely on a person who came from another country to come and make easy money in a country called Kenya? If you go to a shop, these people will ask you whether you want a receipt or not. They tell you that if you do not ask for a receipt you will not pay any tax. That is what they say. It is a fact. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is a fact that when you go to these shops they will tell you that if you do not ask for a receipt, they will sell the goods to you at a lower price. If you insist on the receipt, which shows the tax, then they will sell to you at a higher price. We want collection of tax at the level of the manufacturer. We should not go to the retailer or distributor. 1658 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 28, 2006 This should apply to every manufacturer, even fuel manufacturers. Why is it that we collect every single cent from the Fuel Levy Fund and that cost is transmitted to the passenger in a matatu or a bus? Why do we not impose the VAT on the manufacturers? If we collect tax directly from the manufacturer or the importer, that manufacturer will make sure that he transmits that cost to the retailer. We should not expect the retailer to buy from the manufacturer and collect the tax for the Government because we would be misleading ourselves. That is why these people come here, collect money and in a few years they have disappeared. I believe that it is only in this nation where people are allowed to transmit money abroad. They go to the forex bureaus, buy dollars and take them out of this country. Whereas the father and the son are in the shop, his wife and daughter are in these multinational banks buying dollars and remitting. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I come from an area which produces tea and coffee and I am sad that the dollar never stabilises against the shilling because they allow people to send away money. You will find that somebody is selling in the shop but he sends his next of kin to foreign-owned banks to send away dollars. This is because the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) does not determine how many dollars one can remit and for what reason. If we do not start regulating the foreign exchange going out of the country, then this country will be working for people who will continue stashing dollars away in foreign countries. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to talk about the Sugar Development Levy. We are taxing the Kenyan sugar-cane farmer for producing sugar. This is a very sad situation. If that is the case, then let us liberalise sugar production. At the moment areas which can produce sugar from sugar beet are restricted from doing so, because of some agreements with some strange countries. We should be allowed - and I am going to do it in my area - to grow sugar beet. Why are we stopped from producing sugar from the beet crop, yet we have a deficit of over 200,000 tonnes of clean sugar every year? Why do we stick to only sugar-cane and tax the farmers very heavily? This is a sad situation. So, we have to allow regions where sugar beet can grow to start growing and producing sugar from it. There is no difference between the soils in Europe, where they grow sugar beet, and those in our highlands. Let us grow sugar beet and reduce the sugar deficit. This deficit leads to the importation of sugar. We import sugar from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region, but in the end a few individuals benefit a lot. This is a sad situation. We have to start producing enough sugar for the country."
}