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{
    "id": 836958,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/836958/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 285,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Molo, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kuria Kimani",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13435,
        "legal_name": "Francis Kuria Kimani",
        "slug": "francis-kuria-kimani"
    },
    "content": " The Member is misleading about where I am getting these figures from. I am getting them from the Report that you did; the imports and exports, the balance of trade. For you to calculate the rate of increase or decrease on imports or exports, you just need to use a calculator and analyse it. On the issue of provinces, I am not an authority in this. I asked the Committee to confirm whether there are 22 or 23. Again, I am not an authority in the number of provinces that exist in China. Back to my line of thought, our exports to Japan grew by 52 per cent. This shows that it remained almost the same. Therefore, a balance of trade was able to improve from negative Kshs81 billion to negative Kshs78 billion. Let us compare that with Austria. For this, I would also like our Members to look at their Report on page 48 where they are talking about the trade and economic cooperation between Kenya and Austria. The second paragraph says Kenya’s exports to Austria in 2016 were valued at Kshs114,242,565 against imports from Austria valued at Kshs2,707,321,042. They are saying Kenya has maintained a steadily growing positive balance of trade which stood at Kshs2,593,078,477. These figures cannot add up. Therefore, either one of the commas was supposed to be a full stop or something. You cannot say that the export was about Kshs 114 million against imports of Kshs 2 trillion yet you are saying that the balance of trade is a negative Kshs2.593 trillion. This is something that the committee will need to look at and clarify. On the issue of South Korea, our exports between 2012 and 2013 grew by 83 per cent but what we imported from them reduced from Kshs 22 billion to Kshs 14 billion. This is an improvement in our balance of trade from negative Kshs 21 billion to negative Kshs 12 billion. So, you can see that of all these samples of the embassies that we received, when you look at our engagement with these countries in terms of our economic trade and specifically by measure of our balance of trade, we seem to be improving in all the countries apart from China. We tell ourselves that this is our biggest ally. It is high time the Kenyan Government reviewed its foreign policy. When we talk about loans to this country, we just talk about the value of our imports and our exports. They have improved in all the other countries but for China we continue to do poorly. We are now saying that we have a balance of trade of negative Kshs327 billion from negative Kshs140 billion. Our imports have grown by 136 per cent. At what percentage has our export to that country grown? It is only 38 per cent. Could we now invite the policy by John Keynes who was the Leader of the UN Monetary and Financial Conference in 1944, who established the Bretton Woods. He formed the Keynesian theory which says those countries that cause an imbalance in the balance of trade, should have incentives to ensure that we end up with a favourable balance of trade. We cannot continue trading with China year in, year out, we are becoming worse off. Our balance of trade has gone to the highest negatives and yet we continue to say China is one of our biggest allies."
}