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{
    "id": 947023,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/947023/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 247,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "Let me say something about debt restructuring. It is a normal and common practice even in the private sector. It is called balance sheet restructuring in companies. This is where you can decide to ask the shareholders to come forward and buy what is owed to creditors so that you reduce the cost of doing business in the company. As a country, we have realised, and it is painful, that those who are charged with the responsibility of protecting and securing the interests of Kenyans at the National Treasury went ahead and borrowed very expensive loans for reasons that cannot be justified. They took syndicated loans from commercial institutions which charge interest rates of 7 and 9 per cent. They went ahead and borrowed domestically which crowded out the private sector. The law that Hon. Jude Njomo brought here cannot help this country because the Government is competing with the private sector in borrowing money at a minimum of 12 per cent. We have gone that route and someone has taken us there. The worst part of it is that this money has been borrowed and has been spent in projects that cannot be identified or clearly shown to us. There was a time I asked here, when we were discussing the Eurobond, why we should borrow money to sweep Kondele and make it clean. That is what we did. We borrowed Eurobond and gave it to the National Youth Service (NYS) to sweep Kondele, Kibra and other places in order to make them clean. That was a good thing, but we would have used our domestically raised revenue to do that because loans are expensive. You need to put them in a productive sector where they will pay themselves. 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."
}