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{
    "id": 449225,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/449225/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 167,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ng’ongo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Speaker, I want to touch on areas that the Chairman did not mention; specifically, I want to refer to loans. This House needs to be very clear because I do not want to see a situation where hon. Members walk out of this House not knowing what exactly we have approved. This House must realize that among the amounts we are approving, in terms of new loans, in this Supplementary Budget, is Kshs1.4 billion that was paid to the so-called Anglo Leasing projects. It is in this Supplementary Budget Estimates. Therefore, we need to know that the Government paid the money on the basis that they would apply Article 223 of the Constitution. Already, this money is spent. Therefore, as a Committee, we noted that the Government has paid and is now asking Parliament to approve the payment. This House now needs to make decisions objectively; let us decide whether we will go ahead and approve this, or still insist, as we did before we went on recess, that we are not going to pay the money. The money has already been paid, and we are being asked under Article 223 of the Constitution to approve that particular payment. I thought that was important for hon. Members to know. Of concern to me is the issue of debt management strategy of the National Treasury. I think there is a problem with debt management strategy of the Treasury. There is a loan we call “syndicated loan” of US$600 million, which was supposed to be repaid by the Government of Kenya in the month of May. This amount could not be paid; it translates to about Kshs52 billion. The reason we were given for not paying this amount in May was that we did not have resources. The programme of the Government was to raise money through sovereign bonds to be able to pay this loan. Because of requesting to defer the payment of this loan from May to August, Kenyan taxpayers are going to pay Kshs2 billion more in terms of interest and also penalties; this is because of asking those who gave us the money to defer the payment. Hon. Speaker, on top of this Kshs2 billion, there is also Kshs1.2 billion which has already been paid. There was Kshs570 million and then Kshs700 million paid for penalties. There is interest that we are going to pay. Article 203 of our Constitution is very clear that loan repayment is a fast charge on the Consolidated Fund. When we do budgeting, we budget for Development Expenditure, Recurrent Expenditure and Consolidated Fund Services (CFS).Those are the three categories of expenditure. We know that always there is under absorption of the development allocation. The only The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}