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{
    "id": 730248,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/730248/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 244,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "content": "them good salaries to work as we saw under the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) Government and the coalition government. In the NARC Government, we never had any problem with the wage bill. One of the things that we did as a policy was to reduce the tax rate and broaden the tax base; that meant that a lot of people opened business. This time today, businesses are closing, the private sector is retrenching people and a lot of people are joining the unemployment lines because of a poor economy. Why is our economy poor? One is because of bad economic policies by this government. Secondly, there is no planning. You cannot have an economy without planning. Mwalimu Julius Nyerere once said, “to plan is tochoose.” Madam Temporary Speaker, this Government does not know how to put good money to good use. One example is the Galana-Kulalu Irrigation Scheme project. Why do you have to put billions of shillings in a project that is not going to work? The second thing is corruption. Why do you have to pay almost three times building the Standard Gauge Railway from Mombasa to Nairobi? If you look at the amount of money we pay per kilometer in building that railway, it is way above the international standard. Tanzania is going to build their railway for about US$3 million per kilometer. We are using US$8.5 million per kilometer. What kind of economics is that? It is because of corruption. When you have that level of corruption and not putting good money to good use, you will have a constricting economy and you will cry about wage bill. Therefore, you cannot solve the problem of unemployment when you are crying about the wage bill because the economy is not growing. Since you are having a mediocre economy, you end up having a mediocre State of the Nation Address."
}