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{
    "id": 975426,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/975426/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 194,
    "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": "Hon. Speaker, we are only remaining with 10 years to the end of the Vision 2030 period. Kenyans are very worried that this vision will not be attained. It will be a dream like any other that has not been achieved. By now, we were expecting to grow, at least, by 10 per cent annually but, for the past five years, we have been growing at an average of 5 per cent or even less than that. A review of the BPS shows that there is no serious assessment of why we have not been hitting the target of the 10 per cent growth that we had planned to attain when we started Vision 2030. There are other targets that were very critical and very important, and which we have not been able to attain. But I do not want to go into such details. The situation in this country as it is today - and I want to say this candidly and without any fear or favour – is that our economy can be referred to as: “ Hakuna pesa ecomomy” . This is so because in realistic terms, we are facing financial challenges as a country. This kind of economy has been created by three factors that I want to address. The fact that the Government is procuring goods and services and not paying for them is one of the contributing factors to the problems that we are facing in this country of lack of cash in the economy. This is what we call pending bills. I appreciate that the Government has been trying to ensure that the pending bills are settled and it is commendable. Both national and county governments are not paying suppliers and contractors. If you do not pay the suppliers and the contractors, you are killing the economy. Most of those contractors and suppliers borrow money from banks at high interest rates. When you do not pay them, you are affecting their businesses and you are causing a total economic paralysis in the country. This is something that the Government ought to have addressed earlier. Even as they try to address it, they are creating more difficult situations for the economy. How? Through the directive by the National Treasury that MDAs settle the budget with current provisions. You already have a budget you had planned that you are going to procure goods and services and do projects for the particular year and then you are told to use that money to settle previous debts. The effect of this is that you are going to create other pending bills if you have not provided for specific allocations for clearing those pending bills. Therefore, the Government must come out clearly if they want to sort out the problem of pending bills by making them the first charge during the budget process. They cannot come in the course of the year when already MDAs have already budgeted for their programmes and tell them that part of the money they have budgeted for should be applied in paying pending bills. That is causing total confusion and total mess in the economy in general. We are in a vicious cycle of pending bills as we rob Peter to pay Paul. That is what we are doing currently. The National Treasury lacks strategy to address this issue. So, we need a serious strategy on how to contain commitments so as to deal with pending bills."
}