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{
    "id": 776254,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/776254/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 177,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Atandi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13290,
        "legal_name": "Samuel Onunga Atandi",
        "slug": "samuel-onunga-atandi"
    },
    "content": "Thank you Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me this opportunity to ventilate on this very important policy Motion. I want to say that any serious policy on housing must address the question of financing housing. If you look at those countries that have been able to address the question of housing, countries like the Asian Tigers of the East, countries in Europe such as Canada and Australia have vibrant financial sectors. Financing of housing is not only a preserve for Government. It is also something the private sector, through the financial system, has also incorporated. I speak as an expert and a top professional in the financial sector before I came to this House. I wanted to say that in our present Kenya, we have not been able to succeed in this area because our financial system is not that vibrant that it is capable of answering this question. If you were to go into a bank to take a mortgage, it is very expensive. The reason it is expensive is because our previous legislations in this House on the financial sector have mostly been geared towards disrupting or what I call trying to undermine investors in that sector. Monies that you receive from banks to finance mortgage are very expensive because banks rely on short-term deposits from customers. So, you will find that investors in the housing sector have to sell their houses very exorbitantly. You know most Kenyans cannot afford. Even in this House, you know very well that many Members of Parliament are unable to use our mortgage system to finance houses in upmarket areas such as Karen. Just to take you back, when the Leader of the Majority Party was making his statements on the Motion on the nomination of members to the Parliamentary Service Commission, he made a reference to the experts in this sector. If Commissioners of the PSC are here, I want them to note that I am a very important resource in that area and that I am willing to donate my knowledge so that we have Members in this Parliament really accessing those mortgage facilities with better information. Coming back to this issue, how do we as a country get to be able to support Government in the area of housing? This is something that I believe the drafters of this policy paper need to look at. One, we have an option for what we call housing development bonds in this country. They are ideally affordable. Any investor in the financial sector could take advantage to bridge the gap that will be left by the Government’s budgetary funding. The other issue is the fact that we presently tax the housing development bonds. So, it is also very expensive. This is one avenue that would really help this economy to spur the development of housing. As a recommendation, one of the things that this House must do is to try and make the financial sector as vibrant as possible, so that it is able to support Government initiatives. You know that the Government budgetary allocation for housing has continued to dwindle in the recent past years. This is not by design because our revenue generation projections have not been met and so the Government does not have sufficient resources to fund the development of housing. My proposal is that, as a House, we must think far and wide and bring in proposals that will be capable of making our financial sector vibrant and, therefore, capable of supporting the Government initiative towards the development of the housing sector. I have noted that this Policy has been well crafted except in the area of financing to which it has paid lip service. I think it is the most critical and most important. The other issue that I want to raise is how as a House we can support our financial sector to do this. In the last Parliament, this House attempted to make certain proposals to tame the The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}