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{
    "id": 327029,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/327029/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 767,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Kimunya",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Transport",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 174,
        "legal_name": "Amos Muhinga Kimunya",
        "slug": "amos-kimunya"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Chairman, Sir, for the protection. Let us be sensitive to some of these things that when we pass laws in this House, the intention maybe good to protect people who borrow from the Government banks, but the same intention is a double edged sword. It will cut across and punish 78 per cent Kenyans who own the KCB, just because the Government is a co- investor with them. The bank will start performing poorly because whatever interest the KCB will be charging to any one is capped at 4 per cent. That is one of the things that we cannot allow in the market. The other shareholder who is investing in any other bank is free to do what they want. That discrimination in the market distorts the market. There is no market that is worse to distort than the financial market. The second point that I want to make, and I think it is what hon. Midiwo is attempting to do, is that public funds shall only be put in Government banks. You have even gone further to say that public entities shall only open bank accounts in banks in which the Government is shareholding. There are only three banks where the Government is a shareholder, namely, the National Bank, the Kenya Commercial Bank and the Consolidated Bank. Do they have a presence in every part of this country? What is going to happen to all the public schools which are obligated to open bank accounts? What will happen to all the CDF management committees who we say must open accounts in the bank for us to give them money? They will all of a sudden be told that they must close those accounts and move to the nearest Government owned bank, which could be miles away. As a result, even at the PMC for them to go and pay the local fundi, they will have to travel miles away. Where right now they can do that through all those agencies and banks, they will have to travel miles to withdraw the money. You will now be hearing cases of ‘we went to withdraw the money and it was stolen in a matatu” . Those are things that we must now avoid. The intention may be good, but the Government banking system has been spread to all the constituencies in the country."
}