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{
    "id": 924826,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/924826/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 112,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tigania West, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mutunga",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13495,
        "legal_name": "John Kanyuithia Mutunga",
        "slug": "john-kanyuithia-mutunga"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker for the opportunity to contribute to this Motion. I thank Hon. Waluke for bringing it to the House. This Motion has been brought in good time for us to assess ourselves as a country and ask ourselves very honest and difficult questions. Why has the trade deficit been increasing instead of decreasing? Why has Kenya lost most of her quotas to the world market? One of the five ways a country can make money or revenue is through trade. As long as we buy a lot more than we sell, we cannot make a lot of money for the country or the individuals within the country. We need to look at the measures we can take in order to reduce the trade deficit and make money as other countries are doing. One of the things we should be learning is why some countries in Asia perform so well while we were at the same level in the early 1970s. They have been able to organise their economies because they are honest with themselves. They do what is required of them to continue being in the world market. It does not cost anything to be in the world market. It is not rocket science to be in the world market. I would like to give a very specific example of rice farming in Mwea. Farmers from Mwea produce rice on their farms. They process rice at Mwea and sell it at world market prices. That is a classic example of what we should do with all our commodities so that we sell them across the board. We lost quotas as a country and we are not ashamed. We lost our coffee quota. We were selling 120,000 metric tonnes of coffee to the world market. We lost our beef quota. We lost our pyrethrum quota where we were commanding 70 per cent of the world market. We are leaving these commodities to other countries. Rwanda, which is a small country compared to Kenya, is now almost leading in pyrethrum production. Why does our pyrethrum industry not perform? It is because of the individuals who are involved in managing it. We would like serious intervention from the Government to make sure that individuals charged with the responsibility to manage commodities do what is supposed to be done so that those commodities are managed in the best way possible. When we make a decision as a country to rely on imports and not exports; when we deny our people an opportunity to produce what they are capable of; and when we do not ask ourselves where we have a comparative and competitive advantage so that we will be able to 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."
}