The decentralization reform still faces serious challenges, because its irreversibility is still not politically enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine. This was announced on air of TV Channel 5 by Deputy Prime Minister/ Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine Hennadii Zubko.

According to the official, Ukrainians who believed in the reform and united, these days already clearly feel the achievements of decentralization due to a number of infrastructure projects being implemented. And their amount is already over 11,000. With the state support and local budget funds, there have been build new schools, kindergartens, out-patient clinics, stadiums, CASPs, security centers by the communities.

"Those are the Ukrainian citizens who have already had an opportunity to influence the local authorities, plan their community development, receive the new quality of educational, medical, social and administrative services", Hennadii Zubko emphasized.

Apart from that, the Deputy Prime Minister dwelt on the issue of increasing local budgets. "When there are a public support tool and continuous growth of the revenues the communities obtain an opportunity to plan and implement priority projects. If we take for comparing the earnings of the communities, in 2014 that number amounted to UAH 70 billion, in 2018 – UAH 234 billion, and in 2019 we forecast it being UAH 291 billion. In terms of state support, in 2014, the sum worth UAH 500 million was transferred to the regions, this year - UAH 33 billion. This is the money that the state transfers to the regional level and the local governments, in line with the designed development strategies, determine priority projects. In such a way there occurs the synergy of state regional policy and regional development strategies that are adopted on the local level", explained the official.