Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 91934,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/91934/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 304,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "the budget committee. From the outset I want to commend the Ministry of Finance under the watch of Mr. Kenyatta for having done a good job ever since he took it over. We have seen tremendous improvement and a lot of resource mobilization under his watch. That is commendable. We have a stable economy. Having said that, I must point out that the Minister did not honour our summons as a committee to come and answer a few questions on the Consolidated Fund Services. Under Consolidated Fund Services (CFS) in the present Budget we have allocated close to 19 per cent of it, and that is a huge chunk of our resources. It is imperative that we get to know what is in it, given the fact that the CFS is a privileged expenditure. We can only scrutinize it at the committee level. What we noted was that the public debt in the 2009/2010 financial year stood at 45.6 percent of GDP. This is expected to rise to about 46 percent of GDP. On the face of it, when we evaluate these things qualitatively, we will have the Ministry of Finance saying that this is still sustainable. I think it is time the Ministry of Finance moved from this qualitative assessment of the debt levels to a quantitative assessment, whereby we can tie our public debt to a given figure of the GDP. In relation to the Consolidated Funds Services (CFS) I want to say thank you to Kenyans who voted for the new Constitution. With the new Constitution we will have a more transparent country, where information will flow freely. Under the privilege of CFS, it has been reported here repeatedly that there were pending bills that were converted into bonds and which are now being paid through the CFS. The problem with this is that these pending bills initially were not even eligible for payment. Today, they have been ring-fenced and they are being paid through the CFS. This is denying Kenyans the funds necessary for service delivery for their benefit."
}