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{
    "id": 884034,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/884034/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 328,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Murkomen",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 440,
        "legal_name": "Onesimus Kipchumba Murkomen",
        "slug": "kipchumba-murkomen"
    },
    "content": "Another provision says a person shall not export, import, market, or process tea or tea products unless he has applied for and obtained licence from the Authority. There is a sense of argument on both sides. On one hand, it is important because you are protecting people by telling them they must have licenses and so on. The only thing I am asking myself is the criminalisation of this. To what extent can we say that you punish someone for exporting tea without a licence? Maybe we need to separate the question of export, import, and market and the question of processing tea and tea products. This is because processing tea and tea products has certain consequences in terms of consumption. However, the issue of licencing needs to be analysed further. We were having a high-level conversation somewhere with some of the leaders of this country. They are saying that regulation is part of the reason why some of these sectors are less successful. Someone said in Uganda - the Committee should find out whether it is true - that when they deregulated their coffee sector, it tripled its production. Unlike ourselves where we have to get licence for this and that. My suggestion to the Mover is that the regulatory authority should not end up becoming a cartel of some sort. It should not be an alpha and omega in so far as the tea sector is concerned. Kenya is now working so hard to remove licences. In the ranking of doing business index by the World Bank, we have improved so much. I think we are now number 50 or 60 in the world. I saw there was an improvement last year, although I do not remember the statistics. Every time we pass legislation, we must be careful not to take our country back to the licencing era. Madam Temporary Speaker, this Bill is commendable. I urge that we support it. After we are done with this, we should revisit the one for the food sector which comprises of maize and the other food entities, so that they are regulated separately. We must also think about legislating for pyrethrum, potatoes and so forth. Let us remove this idea that we will have one entity. There is no much reliance in terms of the source of the regulatory authority from money defrayed from Treasury. If we can create a model that those entities will be as independent as possible and raise their resources within the sector for management, then we should not fear about having an entity that will regulate the various sectors as long as returns will be as high as possible in the sector. I totally support this. I want to congratulate Sen. Cheruiyot again and wish him well. I look forward to us passing this Bill in a record time."
}