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{
    "id": 729422,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/729422/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 361,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Billow",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 260,
        "legal_name": "Billow Adan Kerrow",
        "slug": "billow-kerrow"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I rise to support the Motion. I will go straight to a few issues that I want to talk about because of time. I have gone through this speech and I listened to the President when he delivered it. As my colleague has said, it is a statement of the achievements of Jubilee Government for the period they have been in office. As a House or Parliament, our responsibility is to exercise oversight over the Executive. It is in that capacity that we are here to debate this Motion. As my colleague has said, some of the issues that have been raised here, obviously, we will have no issue with them. However, I have a number of comments I want to give. One of the things that, perhaps, this Government at the instigation of this Parliament has succeeded in is the capping of interest rates to 14 per cent currently. That is one of the single and most important achievements in many years if you look at the actions of the Government that directly benefit the people of this country. It is a pity that the President glossed over that issue. In fact, if you look at what he said about it, it is as if, at the end of the day, it was not the right thing that should have been done. That is my problem with this Government. Indeed, all successive governments in the past have always tended to look at the interest of the banks and of the elites or people who control the economy of this country. We are not looking at the interest of the common. If they looked at the interest of the common man, Central Bank and the Treasury would not be arm-twisting the Executive as we see today. We are being told in the media by the Governor of the Central Bank that they are doing a study and they might have to scrap that interest rate capping. The Treasury has said more or less the same. The President has somehow indicated that there are challenges. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, all this is happening because of the lobbying of the Kenya Bankers’ Association. The banks in this country control the Treasury. That is not what it is supposed to be. The CBK is there to regulate the banks in the interest of the people of this country. Just like any other industry, there are institutions that are there to regulate. That regulation must benefit the interest of the common man. It is the people of Kenya to benefit; not looking either at the interest of the shareholders nor the interest of the person who started that business. It is time this Government, particularly the CBK, focused on the interest of Kenyans as opposed to the interest of the banks. Their role is not merely regulatory; their role should be to facilitate the economy instead of only looking at it from one perspective: Are they shareholders making money? Are the banks happy? Are the banks reaping profits? We all know that the banks in this country have been profiteering literally; banks making tens of billions of shillings even when every other sector of the economy is making losses. Today as I speak in the last two years - the Nairobi Stock Exchange can 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"
}