PM: Government expects that Parliament will adopt the Law on State Budget for 2017 before December 1

The Government awaits that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine will adopt the Law on State Budget for 2017, in line with Ukraine’s legislation, before December 1. Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman announced in an interview with journalists in Lviv following his visit to the electrical equipment and automotive parts plant of the Fujikura company.

The Prime Minister said that he had had meetings with three factions of the Verkhovna Rada - the Petro Poroshenko Block, the People’s Front and the Samopomich (Self-Reliance) - to discuss the draft Budget for 2017. Next week is due a meeting with groups of the Parliament "in order to engage in a dialogue that will allow us to endorse not a populist budget, but a real and seminal budget for the next year."

"We rely on the Parliament that it will ensure timely considering of all proposals so that we could adopt this Budget," he said.

However, the Prime Minister noted that populists would prey on the issues related to the Budget, accusing it of being “a cutthroat budget”. Volodymyr Groysman considers such allegations nonsense.

The Head of Government called on the Parliament to develop a constructive position.

"I count on the Ukrainian Parliament do its utmost to consolidate around the adoption of the Budget, therefore, this Budget will be a budget of development and social justice," he said.

The Prime Minister noted that the Government had submitted to the Parliament a balanced, realistic, honest draft Budget, with seven clearly determined priorities. Among them are the national security and defense, large-scale construction of road infrastructure, with planned UAH 35 to 40 billion to allocate for this purpose, the agricultural sector, in which small and medium-sized farms will get support worth UAH 5.5 billion. There have been envisaged a number of regional programmes as well.

Speaking about energy modernization he explained it is supposed to allot UAH 3.8 bn to help local authorities using local resource and that from cooperation with international financial organizations to gain energy independence.

Moreover, the draft Budget contains an increase in salaries of teachers by almost 30% and doctors by almost 20%. From December 1 this year, the Government will raise social standards by 10% with further growth by 10% the following year.

Volodymyr Groysman noted he views such improvement of social standards as insufficient, but their growth depends on the growth of the national economy.