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"content": "we must critically look at the agreements that we sign with Europe and other developed States. When we look back at the 1990s when we had the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) we realize that those programmes had a negative impact on our economy and therefore the livelihood of our people. We can hardly see anything positive that came out of the SAPs. As a nation, we should improve the efficiency in our manufacturing sector. Let us fix our roads and the cost of power. We need to look at modern ways of manufacturing in this country so that we are more competitive. We are dealing in trade with developed countries and which also subsidize heavily. For instance, Europe spends about US$1 billion daily in subsidizing production. We also need to subsidize production so that we are more competitive when it comes to dealing with other trading blocs like the European Union. Hon. Speaker, where is our interest at the moment? We export more than 60 per cent of our goods to COMESA. We do the bulk of our trade within the EAC. We should be focusing more on the EAC and COMESA because that will give us the platform to grow as a nation and be more efficient as a producing country. This will also give us a chance to look at markets that are far off like the European market. These agreements, in the past, have not favored us. Every time we reach an agreement with the European nations, the next thing you realize is that the bar is lifted one more height even before you jump the original one. After a while another bar is raised. I support the fact that Kenya should negotiate with the EU on this aspect of trade so that before we enact this law all issues of concern touching on our people are deliberated and right action taken. We are not supposed to sign something that we will regret the following day. Hon. Speaker, with regard to non-tariff barriers, we are affected negatively. When we sign these agreements we can look at the tariff barriers in clear black and white. However, the non-tariff barriers which actually prevent us from accessing the markets in Europe are not clearly spelt out. The Government of Kenya should look critically at the non-tariff barriers. The WTO, IMF and other international agencies, when we look at their work we tend to think that they represent the interests of Europe and other developed nations more than they represent our interests. We should encourage Brazil, South Africa and India. These are nations that are developing and they provide us with good trade policies that we should look at. I beg to support."
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