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{
    "id": 287026,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/287026/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 282,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Otuoma",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 132,
        "legal_name": "Paul Nyongesa Otuoma",
        "slug": "paul-otuoma"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, hon. Shebesh wanted to know about the Enablis issue. This issue came up when the Fund had just been established. The Enablis was a Canadian firm that came up with a proposal to leverage with the Government that whatever shilling that the Government was putting into lending youth programmes, Enablis was going to put in another shilling. We must also realize that, that was just when the Fund was being established and setting up its systems. In the process of negotiation, the deal did not go through. This issue was brought to this House and it was addressed both by the Auditor-General and the Attorney-General and I can table the reports of their findings to this House, if you so order, which show that no money was lost through that process. That is what the audit report and the report from the Attorney-General’s office stated. On the issue as to why the Government should give funds to the Youth Fund and the Youth Fund uses financial intermediaries, as we are calling it, they are financial intermediaries because of the infrastructural capacity to disburse. The Fund did not have offices all over the country. That meant that they must leverage on some of these funds with the infrastructure that could reach out to the various youths in this country. Still, this is part of our challenges to build up our ability to have the infrastructure in every constituency, so that we can reach the youths. We have done this, at least, by addressing the human resource aspect of it. We have opened up regional offices. We have started with ten, but the most important thing is that we want to have offices in every county. So far, we have started with ten regional offices and as we continue to build capacity, that is the way we should go and even transform ourselves into a youth bank. Hon. Mututho has talked about venture capital. This is one of the additional products that we need to bring in because you cannot talk about entrepreneurship without venture capital. One of the things that kill a lot of entrepreneurship in any society is lack of capital; that you can trust that what you are starting up is going to make money. If we look at the technology industry, all the mobile phones and all these things that we are currently using, most of them have been funded through venture capital in other countries. This is a product that we are thinking about. Hon. Khalwale has talked about the impact of the Youth Enterprise Fund in various constituencies. Despite the little funds that we are getting, for example, I have talked about a total of Kshs5.3 billion that has been disbursed and the Government putting in Kshs4.6 billion, I can table in this House how each constituency and each county has performed. Different constituencies and counties have performed very differently. Other than the uniform amount of Kshs735 million which is being given to every constituency, there are certain constituencies whose capacity to borrow, utilize and work together with the financial intermediaries has been very low. That is why we embarked on a sensitization programme in some of those areas."
}