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{
    "id": 974754,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/974754/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 251,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kilifi North, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Owen Baya",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13373,
        "legal_name": "Owen Yaa Baya",
        "slug": "owen-yaa-baya"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker. I stand to support this Business Laws (Amendment) Bill (National Assembly Bill No.80 of 2019) on behalf of my Committee. To begin with, I would like to say that, as a Committee, we looked at the amendments. We did public participation for the same and received a memorandum from Kipkenda and Company Advocates. We also had a meeting with the State Department for Physical Planning and also the National Land Commission to look at the clauses which affect land in ease of business. I am happy to report that in the new amendments, we have clauses 4 up to 23 that affect ease of business especially on land transactions. When you go through all these you will realise that one of the things that we are trying to amend is to introduce electronic signature as one of the ways to transact business and also have electronic documents that can be used as part of land transactions that we have. In doing this, we realised that we are going to have ease of doing business. If you go to the State Department for Physical Planning today, you will realise that there are many queues of people and many brokers who hover around there and they hinder progress of business. It will take you over one year to process a title. If you want to sell land from one person to the other, it takes a long time because of, for example, unavailability of the registers and all that. When we introduce this aspect of filing documents and doing the whole process of transactions on lands through the electronic media by using electronic signatures, et cetera, it will become very easy. If you look at the amendments, they affect different laws such as the Land Registration Act, 2002, the Stamp Duty Act, the Survey Act and others. So, several Acts that relate to matters of lands will be affected. It suffices to say that one of the things that we would like to see as the Departmental Committee on Lands is enablement of the National Lands Integrated Management System. Up to date, this has not taken off because of the problems that all matters of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) in this country must go through the State Department of ICT. That all the money that we have voted in this Parliament to enable the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning to ensure that they have put this system in place, first goes for implementation in the State Department of ICT. In the last two years we have voted money, but the State Department of ICT has not actually enabled this system may be because of the bureaucracies that are involved. We have made suggestions in the BPS that this project now be implemented by the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning itself because it is delaying. Today we are saying that this must be done. When we go into the physical process of doing it, you will realise that it cannot be done because the system is not there. The National Land Commission said that had they been given the money; they would have finished this process. I think there is a general agreement in Government that all ICT matters be handled by ICT. In buying a computer, a laptop and Ipad for a person in the Ministry, they have to go to ICT for them to be enabled. So, as we support this Bill, we need to hasten the processes so that we have a system that can allow the laws that we are amending today to be actualised. We can pass this law but if the system is not there, it will become difficult to implement. As you look at the BPS, land is a factor of production. Three items of the Big Four Agenda are hinged on what happens on land. Housing, food production and manufacturing require land. The more we ease doing business within the land sector, the better we will be to actualise the Big Four Agenda. So, improving the ease of doing business is important. If we can 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."
}