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{
    "id": 975390,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/975390/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 158,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung'wah",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1835,
        "legal_name": "Anthony Kimani Ichung'Wah",
        "slug": "anthony-kimani-ichungwah"
    },
    "content": "Therefore, we must ask ourselves why we are being told that commercial borrowing has gone down and the documents tabled in this House are showing the exact opposite. Commercial borrowing seems to be going up. Therefore, it means a lot of interest is paid because commercial debt is more expensive than the concessional loans that we get from bilateral and multilateral donors like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). We have raised these concerns with the National Treasury and, indeed, you will notice this from our policy recommendations. The first policy recommendation before the Budget Estimates for the Financial Year 2020/2021 is submitted to the House since there is no mechanism under the Public Finance Management (PFM) law to re-submit the BPS. So, in the absence of this, we have recommended that before the National Treasury submits the annual estimates for the next financial year, it must re-submit the macro-economic and fiscal framework with adequate information on debt. They should clearly indicate the amount of concessional, semi-concessional and commercial loans as well as clearly outlining the country’s borrowing strategy. This information should be accompanied by a list of specific projects that will benefit from those funds and realign what they submit to the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy Paper. The Leader of the Minority Party has articulated these issues very well. At least, for the last two years I have sat with him in the Budget and Appropriations Committee he has been very specific to the National Treasury that there is need to have a reconcilable list of projects financed from borrowed money. We must be honest with ourselves. If we are unable to show what we are financing from borrowed money, there is a possibility that we could be financing part of our recurrent expenditure - paying salaries, wages and other allowances through the money that we have borrowed. If we continue doing this as a country, we may not get very far. Therefore, there is need to relook into this because we oversee the National Treasury on matters to do with Budget. We are the House that is supposed to do the Budget. Therefore, we should insist to see what is funded by the monies we borrow. Hon. Speaker, I do not want to go through all the policy recommendations, but part of them. That, by 30th April 2020, when the Budget Estimates are submitted to the House, there be developed a criterion for identifying and isolating core priority programmes under the Big Four in the 2020/2012 Budget. This is in order to protect us from ad hoc expenditure cuts in addition to accountability matrix that should be provided clearly identifying the total resource requirements as well as Monitoring and Evaluation framework. This is the third year we are speaking about this in this House. Our two previous Reports of the Budget and Appropriations Committee have spoken to this issue. We requested from the first year when we started talking about the Big Four Agenda, that the National Treasury ought to prepare an implementation matrix of the Big Four Agenda. They should identify the specific projects called Big Four projects under the four pillars from Universal Health Care (UHC) to housing. There is concern that up to date, this has not been provided to the House. Therefore, it is very difficult for Departmental Committees. For example, the Departmental Committee on Transport, Public Works and Housing under Hon. Pkosing, is unable to track identifiable projects that are supposed to be Big Four Projects and how much money is allocated to a particular project in a particular year. They need to know how much is supposed to be allocated in the next two or three years and how that money is being utilised."
}