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{
    "id": 685315,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/685315/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 165,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Lati",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2762,
        "legal_name": "Jonathan Lelelit Lati",
        "slug": "jonathan-lelelit-lati"
    },
    "content": "Thank you for this opportunity, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I have been here for quite a while and I understand that this is a very important Bill for our country. It is the Bill that finances our budget and creates revenue sources to finance the Appropriation Bill that we just passed. There are very good positive things in this Bill and some things that are not very good. The aspect of boosting tourism is very important. Tourism in this country is one of the top earners of foreign exchange. Exempting park fees from VAT is very important. Where I come from, we have expanded tourism beyond the traditional national parks to community conservancies. The exemption of VAT on park fees will go a long way in giving those communities incentives so that they can take care of wildlife and protect our national heritage. I have heard some members say here that the animal feeds issue is a boost to livestock. What we forget is that we tend to take care of a very small section of our country and forget the bigger part. The number of livestock that benefit from that feed is small compared to the livestock that are in areas where other pastoralists and I come from. We do not need these feeds. If you are making a Finance Bill for the entire country, and you narrow yourself to a place where there is a small number of livestock, where livestock are fed in pens and paddocks and you forget to create any incentives for the majority of livestock keepers in Kenya, then there is a lot of biasness in this country. If you look at the income generating activities of our people, and there is nothing else that can be put here--- The population of people who keep the small number of livestock in pens that require feeds is bigger than those of us who come from sparsely populated areas of Kenya. You should have taken care of the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) which would have touched a bigger section of livestock in Kenya. You should have removed taxes on drugs like acaricides used in dips so that those pastoralists can buy them cheaply. When you tell me that all you can create is an incentive to lower taxes on feeds, it beats logic. Which animals will you feed? Is it the one, two or three cows in pens in some parts of Kenya? It is very bad. I think we should look at Kenya as a country for all of us. I do not even know how many cows are being kept and fed in Kenya compared to those cows that are in free range in northern Kenya and other parts of the country. So, it has something else other than the livestock. It may be because our people have less votes and nobody really cares about them. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, on the Banking Act violation, it is a very good step forward that we move from charging banks Kshs5 million to Kshs20 million. In my opinion Kshs20 million to banks is still very small. Probably, it is better than what we had before but it is very small compared to what we have had in this country in less than a year in banks like Chase, Dubai and Prime. We have to be very careful when we talk about things that are monetary policy in this country. I also want interest rates to come down in this country. I know that we have an imperfect economy; a very biased economy, indeed, but you can regulate commodity prices. Any time you get into the monetary policy of a country, you must be very careful because there are things that you would not be able to control. Maybe in our country, we might need that probably on a short-term basis. The problem in Kenya, which I think Hon. Njomo should have looked at, is that banks are doing things that are not good. Again, anywhere in the world where the Government becomes a borrower, it creates a crowding out effect within the economy. That is the first cure we should have done to our economy. We should have taken the Government out of the domestic 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."
}