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    "id": 386276,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/386276/?format=api",
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    "content": "doing a good job. I think this is a good start. I also wish to congratulate the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker who is now the substantive Chair for being elected to those positions. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President’s Address was simply inspiring. He read out his agenda for the next five years, although I think now it is exactly four-and-a-half years unless we scheme something around that time. In his Address, he indicated that he will be calling upon participation of legislators in one way or another and, therefore, I take it that the comments which are being made on his Speech, whether we agree completely or a little and some people disapprove of it, I think it is part of the game. Some people have put the agenda to make this country a middle income country at 50 years and I think I will put it at 30 years, I think it would be very good if we did that. If nothing else, we will have shorter queues of people who line up to get assistance for basic things like school fees and medical bills in our counties. With that, I wish the President well. He dwelt a little bit on the Recurrent Expenditure and the rather large wage bill which was quoted at 12 per cent of the GDP as opposed to perhaps the recommended 7 per cent. But I personally do not think the wage bill is too large. The problem is that the GDP is too low. A country which has been independent for 50 years with a population of 40 million people generating a GDP of only US Dollars 34 billion – if the figures quoted in the international statistics are anything to go by – I think it is far too little. By now we should be a middle income country compared to the likes of Botswana, Seychelles and so on. In which case, we should be talking of a GDP of US dollars 200 billion to 300 billion. If anything, the Kshs468 billion for the wage bill would really be little even if you doubled it. It would be only 5 per cent or 6 per cent. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is not too difficult to see why our GDP is so little. If you have as large as 40 per cent of our population not gainfully employed, then who is producing the goods and services? The human resource experts tell us that when you have very high unemployment rates, you also generate very high under-employment. I constantly meet boda boda operators who hold Bachelor of Science degrees in Agriculture and other degrees, but they have found their way into the boda boda industry because they have nothing else to do. The real problem – so that the wage bill does not look so large vis-à-vis our GDP--- Our duty is to grow the economy. When we grow the economy, I wish to note something which was said by those who were trying to become Governors of Nairobi during the elections, including the one who was duly elected, each one of them seemed to be very proud of the fact that Nairobi is producing upwards of two thirds of the GDP of this country. I think there is nothing more disastrous than that. There is no way we can have 5 per cent of the population producing 70 per cent of the goods and services and we continue thinking that things are alright, they are not! We need to grow the economies in the counties. We should devolve the economy from Nairobi to the counties. It is not too difficult even when you go to the counties to know where to start because each one of the counties has some raw product of some sort; livestock, grains and things like that. The first duty we have is value-addition. This Senate has a job to do. We somehow must use our positions and make sure that the counties where we come from start industries which are value-adding the products which we are producing in our respective counties. Where I come from, Nyandarua County, we produce a third of the milk consumed in this country. We produce the second most staple crop, potatoes, that is consumed in this country and yet we sell all of them raw. We do not “value add” The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}