Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 808276,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/808276/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 205,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kipkelion East, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Joseph Limo",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1915,
        "legal_name": "Joseph Kirui Limo",
        "slug": "joseph-kirui-limo"
    },
    "content": "organised system which has always existed. You will find a casino at the Intercontinental Hotel, but we have never gone there. It is for particular people. So, we should leave our people to have an organised way of doing things even if they have to play the games. We must limit to organised ways of doing it. Therefore, this proposal to bring in winnings to taxation is very good, so that all of us participate in building our economy. On the Stamp Duty Act, the proposal here is very good. It is proposed that, for the first- time owners of houses in this country, they are exempted from Stamp Duty. Stamp Duty is significant because if you are buying a house, you are required to pay up to Kshs1 million as Stamp Duty. If this is exempted, it becomes easier. That is an initiative by the Government to give some relief to the people and encourage them. It is an incentive which will encourage people to buy and own houses. On the issue of the VAT, I had explained when I was explaining the stakeholders’ views. This Bill is proposing several items which were initially zero-rated. They are now being taken to exempt. We have said, as long as this move is going to lessen administrative cost in terms of collection and claiming of refunds, then that will be fine. The only problem we had was, there are some essential products including medicine and pesticides, which are going to work against the two pillars which the President is working to achieve. When you make medicine expensive, you are making the pillar on universal health unachievable. When you also make pesticides expensive, we are making our farmers miserable and they are not going to make this country food secure. We want this country to achieve those particular pillars in an easy way. Therefore, the particular proposals to make medicine and some pesticides expensive will be considered by our committee through amendments which will be brought to this House at a later stage. In the Committee of the whole House stage, we are going to propose amendments to make these particular items which are going to be expensive for the people of this country I want to talk about the pillar on food security. This country is capable of doing much better. We must move to a situation where we are making farmers to be encouraged to do farming. We cannot continue to be in a country where we are making farming look like a punishment. All the challenges that we have been having in terms of producing cheaply and making sure that we have enough food, can only be achieved by working around what the Cabinet Secretary mentioned during his Budget Speech, mass farm contracting. The most successful countries have embraced mass farm contracting. You contract the farmers. If you need food to be produced in large numbers, we must ensure farmers have peace of mind. So, we must look at ways of ensuring that the Government does mass farm contracting directly or indirectly. The Government through National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) and the Ministry of Agriculture must continue registering farmers and then work on a programme where you sign a contract with the farmers. This will make this country to move away from the current situation where we are concentrating on subsidies. Subsidies cannot work well. What we need is to contract the farmer, sign the contract at a certain price and the farmer will move to financiers like banks to get financing through programmes like Local Purchase Order (LPO) financing. Once they are assured that you have a contract to produce these numbers of bags, no one will refuse to fund. If you work around what we are doing in subsidies, it is around Kshs 70 per bag. But if you contract the farmer with the price of Kshs3,500 a bag, it will encourage them and they will work with it. To mitigate the issues of environmental changes in case there is crop failure, we must encourage crop insurance so that the farmers will be safe and they will produce. On housing, at a later stage in the Finance Bill, you will see countries which are successful in ensuring that every citizen has what is called Housing Fund, where we contribute a 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."
}