Amos Kimunya

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 2911 to 2920 of 6175.

• 29 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: Hon. Temporary Deputy Chairman, I would beg the Committee to travel this journey with me. Earlier on, we made a mistake and negated a Question because, perhaps, we did not get it. Now, the import of this amendment, just so that we understand, is that in the event the contribution to the Housing Fund becomes law, as it is now, it is a levy. It is actually a tax; you pay, you lose it. This particular amendment is seeking to convert it from a levy to a contribution to the Fund whereby at some point in the future, you can ... view
• 29 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: It is important that you understand. In fact, if you read… view
• 29 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: If you look at Page 1027 of the Order Paper, you will see that you can transfer your contribution to a pension fund. You can even sign it off to your son or daughter in future. Basically, what it says is that all contributions that people make will also get a return based on the return of the fund. If you go by the Bill as it was suggested earlier, it is a tax. This amendment is improving it to be part of a pension fund where you can get your contribution plus your employer’s. So, if we are bothered ... view
• 28 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: Thank you, Hon. Speaker. I rise to support the Finance Bill and to commend the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning for a job well done. I have gone through its Report. I also had an occasion to interact with the Committee. I am happy because some of the issues that Hon. Mulu has raised have already been considered by the Committee. view
• 28 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: Firstly, I want to recognise that the Cabinet Secretary (CS) for the National Treasury came before this House to read the Budget Speech and then we discussed it. There are some elements of that Speech that became very unpopular. We discussed them in this House. I want to draw the attention of this House to the power we have when we discuss some of those proposals. Because some of those proposals were debated in this House and in the public, they are not in the Finance Bill. For example, one of the proposals that were in the Budget Speech was ... view
• 28 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: I concur with the Members who have contributed. I am an advocate of free markets interventions and letting the markets decide on what happens. However, that market can only operate where there is a conducive environment for a mature market. We need to look at the Kenyan market and financial sector. As much as we are one of the most advanced countries within Africa, do we have a free market economy? We only have a couple of banks which control the entire banking system. That is not the definition of a free market economy. On that basis, market failure then ... view
• 28 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: I am glad because Hon. Jude Njomo managed to cap the banks interest rates. The mistake that happened was capping both ways and straight jacketing the entire financial sector. We said that you cannot charge more than this and you cannot pay the borrowers less than this. That narrowed the space that the banks operate in. As a result, we have seen the crowding out of some 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. view
• 28 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: of the borrowers. Some of us have been agitating for the removal of the lower capping. I am glad because some of the amendments that have been proposed to come at the Committee of the whole House have taken care of that. If we remove that, we will operate from zero or negative because you can also envisage a situation where banks will charge you to keep their money which is a negative interest. There is a lot of leeway, in terms of how much spread the banks have. There is no excuse to say that they cannot price the ... view
• 28 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: There is one thing which I would like some studies to be done on it. People think that the shrinking of credit in the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) is because of the capping of the interest rates. The SMEs fear to go to the banks because you can only borrow money when you have something to do with it that will give you a return which is higher than what you are paying. Most of them are suffering because of the money which they borrowed. You have seen all these young chaps who took the Youth Enterprise Development Fund ... view
• 28 Aug 2018 in National Assembly: Let me talk about Clause 45. I want the Members of the House to support the Committee in this. It increases the penalty for late payment of any tax to 20 per cent. It means, therefore, that if your constituency office manager fails to remit the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) of your staff on the due day and takes it the next day, you will be charge automatically 20 per cent of the tax of all the salaries of your staff. That money is not provided by the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC). Therefore, it will have to come from ... view