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"id": 245700,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/245700/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kajwang",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 164,
"legal_name": "Gerald Otieno Kajwang",
"slug": "otieno-kajwang"
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"content": "I can see that we cannot do it through taxes. We have collected the largest tax we have ever collected since Independence in the last financial year, yet after you make the mandatory payments, what you remain with cannot build roads. We need hundreds of billions of Kenya Shillings to do that. So, we must go the way hon. Wambora has suggested. We must create special bonds for the construction of our roads. No country has ever developed its infrastructure by taxes because you just cannot collect enough. But people can invest in these roads if the Government were to put bonds in place. Our railroads can also go that way. We are not going to build new railroads with taxes. It is not possible. It seems like we have counted our money and we cannot do it. So, we must go that way. Even the railway which we are using was not built by taxes. It was built by Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) which was also collecting bonds from people all over Europe at that time. So, we must just go that way. Our airports should also go the same route, and our telecommunications cannot go on this way if we want to compete. Right now, there are very many international companies which want to invest in this country, so that they can use Kenya as a call centre. That means, if you want to talk to a company in America, you talk to Kenya instead, and they sort out your problems here. Europe is doing a lot with India. But you know that in the Indian Sub-Continent, although they know English, they know very little. Kenyans speak very good English, and we can be a good centre here if only our telecommunication was right. It is too expensive to talk to Kenya and so they cannot just do business here. Some people are trying, but they are doing it at a very high cost. So, this special bonds instrument which the Minister has talked about, and concessioning which we have been talking about for the last five years, should be combined. Unless we fix our infrastructure, it does not matter whatever we try, nobody will just come and invest here. If I had Kshs100 million, I would find somewhere else to invest it. I would make much more money in Dubai than in Kenya. So, why should I invest it in Kenya? Because this is my motherland. But if somebody was a foreigner? So, you must do something which attracts him here. The cost of telecommunication must be down, the airports must be right without \"Arturs\" threatening people everywhere, and the railroads must be right so that goods move cheaply and quickly, and our roads must just be working. Similarly, the cost of electricity must go down. If you do not do those things, then it does June 28, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1703 not matter how much you ask those investors to come because they will not come. Investors come here to make money, not to lose money. They are not patriotic. So, you must give them what they want. If the infrastructure is right and the taxes are low, and the cost of labour is low, they will come. But the cost of labour in Kenya cannot go down because the two things which determine what a worker does with his money are not being fixed. A worker wants to have housing, and our housing is a bit expensive and unavailable. Secondly, they want efficient and cheap urban transport. If you do not fix that, our workers cannot work for Kshs3,000 or even Kshs5,000, because transport takes half of it and housing takes the other half, and they do not even have anything to eat. So, if an investor is going to come here and pay people less than Kshs5,000, people cannot work for him and still survive. Yet, he goes to India and pays people the same amount but people work, because their food and transport is cheap, and their housing is available and cheap. So, we must invest in those three. If you want to invest in it, we must go the same way of bonds. Our taxes cannot build any more houses. I do not know when the Nairobi City Council ever built any houses. Even the houses which were built by Kenyans themselves in certain estates, the infrastructure is terrible. Go to Zimmerman. Kenyans have put billions of shillings in Zimmerman, in beautiful flats, but there is no road or sewerage. If Kenyans have invested that kind of money because they are patriotic and they want to provide housing, why does the Government not fix their roads and put some drainage and sewage? If you cannot do it with taxes, then you just have to go the way of investments, so that Kenyans invest in those roads through bonds. They have invested in housing, and they can also invest in roads. But you organise them, and that is what bonds do. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are lucky we have the deepest and the best port in the East Coast, but we are not making money out of it because we think it is a cash cow. Everybody who goes there thinks it belongs to the Mijikenda or the Waswahili or the Arabs. There is so much war about who controls the port. It is not important. Djibouti is a small little thing at the Horn of Africa, but it is making billions of shillings. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, before I run out of time, let me say one thing. The banking industry is a very sensitive industry which survives on confidence. If it collapses, so many people collapse with it; the investors, the depositors and the small savers. When we come to this House and attack one bank, and give two reasons for that attack: money laundering and tax evasion, the investors lose confidence in that bank. As a result, the bank will collapse. A bank does not launder money. It is the client who puts his money in the bank who may launder. If we know the person who is laundering money, why do we not go for him? If we know the account where the money is being laundered, why do we not freeze it? If we know who is evading tax, whether it is Nakumatt Supermarket or whoever, why do we not go to that account or Nakumatt Supermarket itself? If there is any wrong or criminal liability committed by the bank and the supermarket, why do we not arrest the directors of Nakumatt Supermarket and the bank? Why do we have to close the bank? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when the Governor of the Central Bank was on his way home, he asked the Minister for Finance to close down the bank or withdraw its licence without giving any reason. He himself has been giving that bank a licence year in, year out, up to January, 2006. Now, when he was almost going home in January, 2006, he wanted it closed down. He is the one who certified the bank! There are four people who sign a licence every year; the director of the bank, the Governor of Central Bank of Kenya, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, and the Minister for Finance. If in January, 2006, that bank was correct, when did it start laundering enough for it to be closed? Then everybody says it is doing money laundering. I read this in the Press. They were convinced that there was money laundering and criminality. When you listen to the Minister speaking, and I want to thank him, he says that he really did not have a good 1704 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 28, 2006 reason to close the bank and that he only closed it because he feared a run on the bank. Who told him that there was going to be a run? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when hon. Billow was presenting the so-called \"serious\" or \"damning\" report, it had just come out that morning on 21st June, 2006, and the bank had been told to reply on 4th July, 2006. They were not replying on the question of tax evasion or money laundering. We do not even have a law against money laundering. We do not even know what it is until it is described in our law, because this is a law-making institution. But before they replied, on the same morning when the report was being served to the bank, we were closing it here in Parliament. The next day, the Minister for Finance sent the officers from the Central Bank of Kenya to close it down. Why do we do anything like that to our economy? Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir."
}