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    "id": 565603,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/565603/?format=api",
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    "content": "countries, including those in East and West Africa. For instance, in the major international currencies, the Euro, the Pound and the Dollar, when you compare with the regional ones, the South African Rand, the Ugandan and Tanzanian shilling, they have displayed much more volatility compared with the Kenyan shilling. The rates are even much higher. For example, West Africa, in the last six months, January to June, when the Kenyan shilling depreciated by 7.7 per cent or about 8 per cent, in Ghana, it depreciated by 28 per cent and the Tanzanian shilling by 26 per cent. In Brazil, it has depreciated significantly. In Zambia, it has depreciated by 13 to 14 per cent. In many countries, they have experienced much higher depreciation than ours. I do not think that it is the intention of the Government to have a free fall of the Kenyan shilling. This is why one of the Government’s reactions in the last six months has been to intervene directly in the market by selling dollars to stem the slide. In the last six months, for example, the Government sold US$734 million in the market to reduce the pressure on the shilling. The Government thinks that the shilling should not go below that point. On the point of how to ensure stability in the long-term; I did not go through all of them, but the Government has very strong proposals to address the long-term stability of the shilling. One of them is to address the issue of security. If you look at the flow of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the country, for instance, tourism has suffered because of the problem of insecurity. The Government in the last Budget allocated over Kshs223 billion precisely to deal with that issue of insecurity so that it does not affect investments in the country, including tourism and visitors. Secondly, there are a number of policies in this year’s Budget to address or increase the competitiveness of Kenya’s exports as well as promote consumption of locally produced goods. There are specific tax measures in this year’s Budget that were addressed to ensure that imports of goods that are available locally will be at a price. The idea is to discourage those imports so that Kenyans can consume locally manufactured products. This is effected through a number of the taxation of imports in the Budget recently. I agree with the Senator that in the long-term, we have to remain competitive and enhance value addition in our exports. These are things that the Government has been trying to deal with, particularly in the East African region. This is why regional integration is also one of the main focus of this Government so that we can export more. Tea is one of our key areas of production. Tea prices declined significantly. However, despite all the efforts that the Government put in place, it was not possible to intervene on price decline. You have seen the challenges that we have in marketing coffee. I agree with the Senator. Those are some of the key issues the Government is trying to grapple with and address the inflows of the forex into the country so that the shilling remains stable in the long-term. There are a number of other measures to address macro-economic stability so that we can enhance confidence in the economy. I think that the Senator has the details of all that. The most important one is the global US dollar challenge. As the Euro-zone 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."
}