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"content": "to primary schools, junior secondary schools, and high schools must be released in the first term. We did that in full. We released the entire Ksh48 billion. We will have to release another Ksh24 billion this second term and another Ksh24 billion in third term. At the same time, January is when we pay most loans especially the bilateral loan from China for the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). We paid Ksh10.6 billion in foreign payments on 16th January. We paid another Ksh59 billion on 17th January. I will skip other small amounts and indicate we paid Ksh3 billion on 24th January and Ksh1.1 billion on 21st January. In total, the amount we spent on loan repayments in January alone was Ksh75 billion. You then add to that a salary bill of Ksh80 billion. Our wage bill increased from Ksh75 billion in December to Ksh80 billion in January. Why? One, we on-boarded junior secondary school (JSS) teachers at enhanced salaries. Hon. Omboko Milemba and his team agitated for salary increments, which they deserved, and they got them. We also had to adjust the salaries of our disciplined forces and lecturers who were on the streets at an additional cost of Ksh4.3 billion. All of this pushed our salary bill to Ksh80 billion. When you add Ksh80 billion salaries to Ksh75 billion, you get Ksh155 billion. Moreover, by that point, we had not released any money to the counties, the NGCDF, or any funds for operational expenses. That shows you the high level of commitments we face in January. The story was the same in February. We had a Treasury bond redemption of Ksh51 billion. Redemption means you pay. It is not a rollover. We paid another Treasury bond worth Ksh90.99 billion on 7th April."
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"content": "What am I saying in short? It is not that the National Treasury does not want to honour the commitments I make to this House. Sometimes you have to balance the needs that come before you. We all know that we had to struggle after the Gen-Z agitation. This economy was shut for almost two months. That affected revenue collection. Worse still, we have not been able to receive external finances until now. Fortunately, the doors are now opening for external resources. I was very sure that we were going to get external resources by February or March when I made this commitment in December. Unfortunately, that has delayed. For example, the seventh and eight review of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme delayed. The seventh review was supposed to come in March but it did not happen last year. It did not happen in May, July and September. It happened in November when we combined the seventh and eighth review and got payments from IMF. After that, it was not practical to prepare for the ninth review. We mutually agreed to let go of the ninth review and start another programme. The US$764 million, almost Ksh100 billion, we were to get from IMF is not coming. We had to adjust. The World Bank disbursement of US$600 million is coming in June. Why? Because this House and the Senate in a way delayed in passing the Conflict of Interest Bill of 2023 which was a condition. We thank you for finally passing the Bill. World Bank could not give us money until that Bill was passed. That Bill has just been passed and we thank you for it. The situation is now unlocking. Today, I was with the World Bank representative. It is unlocking US$600 million to us. Another amount that has not come is the African Development Bank loan of US$265 million. Fortunately, it is coming in a week’s time. All the conditions and precedents have been realised. I want to tell you and report here today that we have not made any commission loan borrowing this financial year. We have not borrowed any money commercially. The money that we borrowed was to manage a liability. It is as if we used a Eurobond to payoff Eurobond coming in 2027. We did that because we want to be proactive. We do not want to work as we did before, which put us in problems. Now, we have paid Eurobond that is due in 2027. We realised it was going to cause shocks in our economy if we delayed it. We have not borrowed any money except locally in the domestic market and within the framework. That is why the interest rates are as you see today. One year ago, a 91-day Treasury bill was selling at 16 per The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
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"id": 1557784,
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"content": "cent. Today, it is 8.5 per cent because of being careful and borrowing with caution; not just going to the market."
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"speaker": null,
"content": "(Applause)"
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"content": "Let me come back to the NG-CDF issue. We have defaulted two months. Hon. Speaker, I can table this so that I demonstrate because I think my credibility went down a bit."
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"content": "(Hon. John Mbadi laid the document on the Table)"
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"content": "I can hear a lot. This is evidence that we have transferred Ksh7 billion. We have other very pressing demands on the Exchequer. One of them is transfers to counties. We have also not paid counties for February and March."
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"speaker": null,
"content": "(Loud consultations)"
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"content": "I will assume I did not hear that. I want to give a commitment again. You can see we have the intention to make sure that there is money released to the NG-CDF. My commitment is that we will give another Ksh7 billion in the course of this April. I cannot promise it is next week because we must start paying salaries. However, I will make sure we release another Ksh7 billion to the Board so that we only have one month in default or arrears. Colleagues, I want to repeat something. If something is not done for the NG-CDF under my watch as the Cabinet Secretary, it is not intentional. It is because the pressure is at times too much. Sometimes you have to balance between paying the debts you must pay. There will be no economy if you do not pay debts. We must pay our debts. We must release money to the NG-CDF, education and security sectors. Sometimes we take security for granted when we boast of rising numbers of tourism. We do not know how much threat has been dealt with out there. So, we must support our security. Let me conclude because I know there will be further questions. I plead that, as leaders, people out there may not like us. They may say all sorts of things, but we are still their leaders. We are all privileged. Sometimes, we need to be a little bit cautious. I listened to one of us argue that this country is likely to be taken to Paris and that we are likely to default in debt payments. That is an irresponsible statement. It is irresponsible, can cause panic, and should not come from someone who chaired the Budget and Appropriations Committee in the past."
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"speaker": null,
"content": "(Applause)"
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