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{
    "id": 685323,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/685323/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 173,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "what the Chairman thinks about this. Are you saying that you want three or four big banks in this country that will become cartels and raise the cost of credit at a time when we are saying that we want to reduce the rate of interest in this country? Do you want to kill small banks? This is a bad thought. I will bring an amendment. Let banks be. Let us leave it at Kshs2 billion so that we can have a couple of banks coming up and people competing. What is happening now is that the Competition Authority has failed to rein in, in terms of the charges that banks charge. I have always wondered. Why must banks collude to have the same bank interest rates? It is because they know that there is nothing that can be done to them. So, when you are saying that you are going to have two banks, I do not know what you are hoping will happen to this country. In the housing sector, this country has the biggest part of its population living in the rural areas. Hoping that you are going to have few companies building housing units in Nairobi and in town centres and then give them tax rebates and tax exemptions, do you think that you will sort out the housing problem? That is wrong. Let us have a strong housing policy that will enable us have better housing even in the rural areas. The reason people move to town is that there is no proper housing in the villages. Let us have small cooperatives working with the National Housing Corporation (NHC) to help get resources to enable people build decent and affordable housing in the rural areas. This will sort out the housing problem. However, if you think that giving companies back money because they have built 1000 units will help sort out the housing problem, to me, it is not well thought out. Let us have a proper rural housing policy and a proper peri-urban housing policy and use public money in this area so as to encourage people to invest in the area as opposed to companies building houses. Companies, for example Coca Cola and Bamburi, concentrate on their core business which is not to build the houses but to invest in areas like cement and refreshments. If you think that if they build houses for their staff and you refund them the money for building houses will sort out this housing problem, for me, is myopic. Let us have a proper housing policy so that Kenyans can live decently. This will encourage someone like me who probably wants to build a House for my grandmother or my aunt to do so. Accessing loans that are concessional will encourage me to build three or four houses to the people who want to do that. This will ensure that we involve everybody in this set up. When you say that you are trying to comply with the East African Community (EAC) framework by increasing taxes on cosmetics and yet you know this is a very fast growing area--- It may be right because you want to harmonise the East Africa tax regime but sometimes the way to harmonise a regime is by having lower threshold not by raising yours to fit what is higher. It is by convincing the other guys to come down where we are and not to raise ours because you want to meet them. This hurts our people. In a country where people are very poor, you get ladies looking haggard because they cannot afford cosmetics. Now you are saying you will increase the tax on cosmetics because you want to meet the standards of the EAC. Why can you not tell the EAC to lower theirs so that our people can afford those products? Another issue I want to raise is on bottled water. I grew up until I was 21 years old without using bottled water. We used to go down the rivers and used our hands because the water in those rivers was very clean. Instead of investing in improving rural water and sanitation, you are saying that you are going to lower taxes on bottled water so that many people can access it. The same people do not even have money to buy food and yet you want them to buy water. Who 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."
}