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{
    "id": 94017,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/94017/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 93,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Kimunya",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 174,
        "legal_name": "Amos Muhinga Kimunya",
        "slug": "amos-kimunya"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will allow me not to be the spokesperson for the Minister for Agriculture. I can speak on behalf of the Government, and basically say that the Government is committed to ensuring there is high production of wheat. It is the extra production that will save the wheat farmer. It is what will reduce the overall overhead cost that is being now borne by a small producer, because all the costs have to be met. This is what will make the Kenyan wheat to be competitive as compared to wheat imported from outside the country. As I said before, wheat in an intermediate product. It is important for the House to appreciate this. It does not matter whether you put the duty on wheat at 75 per cent and allow wheat flour to come in at zero per cent duty. If you allow wheat flour to come in at zero per cent and you then charge your duty on the wheat at 75 per cent, you will basically be telling your millers that they should not mill in Kenya. They should go to Uganda, mill there and bring in the wheat flour at zero per cent duty. Once you kill the milling capacity in this country, the wheat farmers have nowhere to sell their wheat, because they cannot sell it directly to a consumer. It has to go to a miller first. So, it is a complicated process that we need to handle with care. We have taken all that into account; there is a milling community that is dependent on finding affordable wheat to mill and then compete with the wheat coming from Egypt and other countries as finished wheat flour. The bottom line for the farmer is more efficiency and inputs. The Ministry of Agriculture should look at the supply and production constraints that the wheat farmer is facing, but not the post-harvest handling of that, which is a trading issue. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in terms of the fish, we want to integrate the inland fish resources and the marine fish resources and have markets for them in the EU. The EU has very stringent measures in terms of market access for our fish. Through this EPAs, we are negotiating what will happen to the fish that we export. What will the EU do in terms of the development of our fishing industry, and the processing at source, so that we are able to process all the fish in Kisumu\\ Naivasha and at all the ponds that we are working on and export it directly to the EU with minimum sanitary requirements at the point of entry? It should all be done at the point of export. So, there is a lot that we are doing. That is something that is in progress; it does not need to have a start date."
}