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"speaker_name": "Mr. Ogindo",
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"legal_name": "Martin Otieno Ogindo",
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"content": "Presently, what we have are financial analysts. I believe that when we fully get into our presidential system of Government, then the need for a strong Budget Office will be more than clear. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, having said that, I want to say that in the Budget Policy Statement, every time, our focus has always been on the expenditure side. We want to see where money goes to. However, it is important to look at the other side of the coin which is the revenue side. It goes without saying that there cannot be expenditure without revenue. The need to spend will forever keep on increasing. It becomes imperative for policy makers to formulate ways and means of increasing our revenue. That brings me to the projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth which my colleague referred to. I want to thank the donors who recently donated to the Parliamentary Budget Office a macro-economic modeling programme that probably has enhanced our capacity to equally model our projections as opposed to relying on Treasury generated models and the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS). The projection we have from the Treasury is that the economy is expected to go up 5.7 per cent and this has been revised downwards by the Budget Office to 5.2 per cent. That means that the revenue, as projected by the Budget Office is less than the revenue projected by the Treasury. I believe and I want to concur with the Treasury that there are many expenditure areas that we have not yet satisfied. It is now calling on our creativity to find ways and means of enlarging the revenue basket. I want to start by saying that in this time and age, the Government ought to have moved away from the manual receipting system of revenue. For all intents and purposes, everybody who touches money faces temptation. Everybody who deals with manual records is very creative. It is very important that we take this as a challenge and we take it positively because we believe it will enhance our resources. In the last Budget Committee Report on the Budget Policy Statement, we recommended the use of the GPRS. That will take effect in the last Finance Bill that was recently assented to into the Finance Act, 2012. I want to call upon the Treasury to ensure that this measure is enforced as soon as possible. I project that with the mere enforcement of the GPRS, we will double our Value Added Tax (VAT) collections. I want to urge that the same is applied to other sources of revenue and various tax heads. The other issue I want to talk about is that the Budget Policy Statement has not adequately recognized the need to actualize devolution. This makes us doubt the commitment of the Executive in the implementation of the devolved government system. At this point in time, we have months to get into a devolved system of government and yet we are seeing very little action, if any, on the ground to show Government commitment and readiness to implement devolution in terms of infrastructure at the ground level. I have had an opportunity to travel across this country and I have gone to Mandera, Wajir and Lodwar. These are county headquarters that have no structures whatsoever that can serve as county assembly offices. This leaves one wondering, upon election, where the Governor and the County Assembly Members will assemble. We are lucky that we have the Estimates here."
}