Arseniy Yatsenyuk: Among essential objectives for next year is to stabilize the situation with prices

One of the main objectives for 2016 is to ensure the settlement of the situation with prices: "There are certain positive developments: in November the inflation rate was only 2% against galloping inflation in the current year", said Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk in the Parliament during the report of the Government of Ukraine on the year’s activity on Friday, December 11.

He recalled that a year ago Ukraine had faced extremely difficult challenges: "The country was on the verge of default. It was the country without an army, without the police. In synergy we formed the new Ukrainian Government and did a lot for Ukraine to be capable to demonstrate to the entire world and the Ukrainian people that we can fight and can achieve certain results".

The approved last year's budget enabled to fill the Treasury with 40% of additional revenues: "Due to the fiscal decentralization, which you had criticized but accepted, local budgets obtained an additional funding of 40%", he urged the MPs.

He noted that presently the accounts of the Treasury of Ukraine comprising the state budget funds, local budget funds, foreign exchange reserves make up UAH 95 billion: "This is the money that enable us to timely pay wages, pensions, all welfare payments, to fully finance the Ukrainian Armed Forces, to absolutely cover the program of benefits and subsidies and to preserve economic and social stability in the country."

According to the Prime Minister, two years before the gold and foreign currency reserves of Ukraine amounted US$ 6 billion, but today - US $ 13 billion: "We have managed to stabilize the situation in the banking sector. We were able to trigger efficient operation of the financial system”.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk emphasized that firstly in four years, the Ukrainian economy demonstrated growth: "We are far from having economic upturn. For this we need a lot more work. But when for four years we have had an ongoing decline of all economic indicators, and for the first time in the last quarter we showed a small GDP growth of 0.7% - it is a clear sign that in 2016 the planned percentage of 2% economic growth envisaged for by the macroeconomic forecast will be real for us to achieve".

He noted that it had been rather hard for the Government to improve welfare standards in September of this year by 13% and 19%: "12.5 million citizens of Ukraine received additional funds from the state budget. In September we made first step for nearly three recent years to improve welfare standards".

The Government has submitted to the Parliament today the draft budget for the following year, in which it plans to increase social standards by 12%: "This year we have failed to compensate by raising social standards for growing prices. But for the next year, we have planned that the improvement of social standards will enable remunerate for the increase in prices and tariffs".