Parliamentary Budget Committee recommends State Budget 2025 for first reading
The Budget Committee of the Verkhovna Rada has recommended the draft State Budget of Ukraine for 2025 and the draft Budget Conclusions for the first reading; their review in the session hall is expected in the coming days.
This was reported on Facebook by Head of the Budget Committee Roksolana Pidlasa.
The MP outlined key changes to the budget draft that the Committee will propose to the government.
Specifically, all sources of funding for the Road Fund are proposed to be redirected to the general budget fund (amounting to UAH 43.2 billion next year) for "priority needs, primarily national security and defense requirements."
The MPs also propose to allocate at least UAH 2 billion for humanitarian demining; consider the possibility of allocating funding (UAH 4.8 billion) for new passenger carriages; and exclude the proposal to transfer hospitals' accounts in banks to the Treasury.
"The apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada will transition to a graded (based on the importance of the position) wage payment system starting April 1, 2025. The so-called 'Chernobyl pension'/supplement for non-working pensioners in the resettlement zone/ will only be paid to those who truly lived in the exclusion zone from 1986 to 1993 (the cost of pension payments to new 'settlers' is about UAH 15 billion)," Pidlasa noted.
The Budget Conclusions also contain a proposal to "reconsider the idea of introducing a bonus for local court judges in 2025" and accordingly revise expenditures for their support.
In terms of inter-budget relations, there is a new initiative to consider the possibility of directing 4% of personal income tax (PIT) to the budgets of united territorial communities (UTCs) while simultaneously abandoning the subsidy from the state budget to regional budgets to compensate for the difference in utility tariffs.
Additionally, it is proposed to determine the feasibility of returning unspent funds from mandatory health insurance to the state budget, meaning leaving UAH 12.9 billion with local healthcare budgets.
As reported, on September 20, Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko presented the draft Law of Ukraine "On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2025" to Parliament. The revenues of the general fund of the state budget (excluding grants and inter-budget transfers) are projected to total UAH 2.007 trillion, which is UAH 411 billion more than this year.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine are funded exclusively from domestic sources, with military expenditures accounting for up to 60% of the total expenditures of the general fund of the state budget.