Nairobi,KENYA: Mathira Member of Parliament Rigathi Gachagua has initiated a bill which seeks to limit foreign contractors to tenders above sh 1 billion.
In a media briefing at parliamentary buildings, Gachagua said that in his proposed bill, if a contract above one billion shillings is awarded to foreigners, locals will get a share of 30 percent while foreigners will get 70 percent of total share.
He pointed that the bill is set to bring sanity, also seeking to rein on what he called Chinese companies that have been accused of raiding the Kenyan economy through the Public Procurement and Disposal (Amendment) Bill.
“Contracts of less than a billion shillings should be left exclusively to Kenyans so as to avail job opportunities to our people, build capacity our to our local firms and eventually promote the implementation of Big four Agenda.”Gachagua said
He said that the legislation on public Procurement and proposal act has been abused whereby foreign companies especially the Chinese have given jobs to foreigners which can be handled by local workers.
“The bill will introduce severe offenses against any foreigners who use local persons to register any trading company in the pretext that the company is fully owned by the local person, but is actually owned and run by foreigners.”He said.
This comes just a week after traders raised the same concerns during an SME trade fair accusing Chinese firms of invading the industry.
