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{
    "id": 250444,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/250444/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 215,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 193,
        "legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
        "slug": "peter-nyongo"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the spirit of this Motion should be understood by the Government; that we should move towards making kerosene much cheaper and LPG cheaper than kerosene so that we do not use our forests for fuel. The forest cover in this country is less than 1 per cent. This is a crisis of monumental proportions. My former Minister for Water and Irrigations says that it is 1.7 per cent. In fact, I think she was better off in the Ministry of Water and Irrigation. She is being wasted now. She was doing a good job for this country. That is just a by the way! I believe that the spirit of this Motion is so important that it must be passed by this House so that it sends a message to the Government that we need cheaper kerosene and LPG and the consumer should not be penalised. Secondly, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the point that Mr. Ojode was making is very important. When you reduce tax and release money for people to buy other things, it stimulates the economy. That is a whole point! It does not mean that people are misusing money. They are spending that money to stimulate that economy. They will buy more shoes, more people will be employed in the leather industry and shoe factories. Transportation to their rural areas will be faster and cheaper and commodities will reach the market. However, when you penalise the people by taking the tax and giving it to a Government which spends it on non-productive things like what we saw in the Supplementary Budget - I was pointing out to the Minister that you cannot find in a Budget other expenses; contingencies being 30 per cent of the total expenditure. Contingencies should only be 5 per cent or less. However, when you put this money in other expenses, it means that you are wasting the people's taxes. The people have a right, therefore, to demand that, that money be returned to them so that they can spend it more productively. The spirit of the House is not to deny him money but to ask him to look for money in the right quarters to spend it responsibly. I believe that if we collected all the land rates and rents in this nation, the Government will get the money it needs for the kind of expenditure it was trying to get from taxing the people. I also believe that if corporate tax was efficiently collected, we would get the money we need to finance Government expenditure. At the moment there is too much avoidance of tax at the corporate level. If we ask these big banks; Barclays Bank, Standard Bank and all the big companies whether they pay the right amount of taxes in this country. My answer is, no! When we were saying in NARC that we want to widen the tax base and reduce the tax rate, we knew exactly what we were doing. However, I do not know why the Minister has decided to renege on the NARC Manifesto. 874 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 3, 2006"
}