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{
    "id": 958245,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/958245/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 168,
    "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": "not enough. In fact, I said here yesterday that there was this argument that the CRA did professional, thorough research, so that it is the National Assembly that is disagreeing with a professional body that has done research and has come up with a figure that is fool-proof, a figure that makes a lot of sense, that is the Kshs335 billion. But do you know what the CRA did? They took what they call average inflation rate for the first three years, at 6.5 per cent, and loaded that inflation rate onto the figure we allocated last year of Kshs314 billion and they came up with Kshs335 billion. That is something which even my Standard Four child can do. She can calculate 6.5 per cent of Kshs314 billion and add onto the Kshs314 billion. Is that a figure that is so researched that the National Assembly - people who have knowledge in finance like Mbadi - cannot interrogate? That is demeaning my intellectual capacity. We have the right to look at the budget in totality and the amounts. This is what I want to say as I wind up. I have said that the thinking that we have so much money in this country is living a lie. We do not have money in this country. We are over- budgeting. And that is something that as a House, which has a responsibility of looking at the Budget, must start addressing. We must address it seriously because Kenyans have been complaining to us and blaming us as the House that approves a Budget that is so heavy that we cannot finance. We project to collect a total of Kshs1.877 trillion in terms of ordinary revenue. Out of that amount, there is the actual debt repayment, if you leave out the debt rollover, of Kshs585 billion. If you add that to the payments we give to constitutional office holders and the Consolidated Fund Services that we give to pensions of Kshs109 billion, and you add that to the money that goes to the constitutional commissions, including the Teachers Service Commission which takes Kshs252 billion, you add Kshs261 billion and you add the money that goes to Parliament, Judiciary and other independent offices like the offices of Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney-General and the Controller of Budget, which is Kshs73 billion, add that to the Kshs12 billion that goes to the Equalisation Fund and the Contingency Fund, you end up with Kshs1.41 trillion. Out of the revenue projection, which is just a projection, you have only Kshs506 billion left. If you take Kshs330 billion, which we give to county governments as sharable revenue and conditional grants from the national Government kitty, you are left with a figure of only Kshs506 billion. The total recurrent expenditure of all ministries starting from internal security; the police, the Office of the President with Kshs8 billion added together with the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of Ksh37 billion, including the Ministry of Defence and other ministries it is over Kshs700 billion. This means we are borrowing money to cover our recurrent expenditure. Then, as a country, we sit somewhere chest-thumb and hold each other to ransom insisting that every place that needs more money must be given. It is not a must even with our domestic expenditure that any place that needs money in the household is always funded. Sometimes you cut the budget to your size, like someone cutting a cloth."
}