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{
    "id": 956066,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/956066/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 315,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nyatike, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Tom Odege",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13459,
        "legal_name": "Tom Mboya Odege",
        "slug": "tom-mboya-odege"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Allow me to join the previous speakers in supporting the Bill. Our main interest as parliamentarians is to defend the interest of Kenyans who elected us to be here and not to allow banks to exploit them. Trying to say that capping the interest rates makes many people not to take loans is a defeatist kind of argument since no one can go for high interest rate because it is high. What Kenyans are looking for is what they can afford and make their businesses work very well. As people who represent Kenyans in this House, it is our responsibility to ensure that we protect our people who elected us. Before the interest rate capping, I took a loan. The interest rate and the period of the recovery of the loan were increasing each and every year. That is the kind of business which we have seen before. We cannot allow anyone who is also doing business in this country to subject our people to high interest rates so that they can make their profit. If they think that doing business with the Government is good enough for them, so be it. We cannot allow them to keep on threatening our people that if you do not do this, then they will do business with the Government. We also have the authority to make it very difficult for them to do business with the Government, so that we make them answerable to Kenyans. We will not allow this kind of arm-twisting which we have seen in our country today. I also want to appreciate what our courts did. If we allow rogue businessmen in the country to exploit our people, we will end up in a situation where no Kenyan will afford to do business in the country since no one will have capital as we rely on banks. If banks think they can only do business with the Government because they can exploit it, then it is our responsibility, as a House, to fix that so that they are subjected to do business with Kenyans."
}