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{
    "id": 400002,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/400002/?format=api",
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    "type": "other",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, apart from that, we need an insurance policy for small-scale farmers and investors; a policy that is friendly and takes care of women and youth groups that have come together. These are groups that grow mangoes or aloe vera and because of weather conditions, that year they do not harvest. That initiative needs to be cushioned from dying by an insurance policy that is friendly and affordable enough for these people to continue with their business. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we also need to remove price distortions in this business. For example, the price of farm inputs, labour, energy and so on. If we do not address the cost of energy in Kenya, which is now escalating, we will have a problem. You cannot pay 80 per cent of your income to KPLC and think that you will still be relevant in this field. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, apart from that, if the Government wants to encourage its citizens to become investors, economic growth must be sustained. Poverty levels are skyrocketing. You do not expect a nation with 90 per cent of poor people to invest in income generating activities. Studies have shown that economic growth alone does not reduce poverty. The economy might be growing, but it might not reduce poverty. The economy might be growing to the benefit of the five per cent of citizens, when the other 95 per cent continue living in poverty. The national Government needs to come up with policies that will help reduce this gap. If this gap continues to widen, whether we invest in 1,000 factories or not, then we will not even have the market for that produce because people will not afford whatever will have been produced. This brings us back to the issue of land. We have people owning big tracts of land which is lying idle. In a county, if you have one family owning 60,000 acres of land, the rest of the people do not even own land to even grow mangoes or cultivate anything. How do you expect that we will support this kind of initiative? We have to start by addressing the root cause of the problem that has been bedeviling this country before we deal with of what we are suffering from. In my opinion, if you have a county where 95 per cent of the people are squatters and 5 per cent of that county own the entire county, then whatever you do, whether they are going to build industries or not, it is still going to the 5 percent; whether you give incentives or not, it will still be impacting the 5 per cent who are already rich. Therefore, we need to address the root cause even as we come up with this. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, having said that, I still want to re-emphasise that we need to bridge the gap between policy formulation and implementation. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}