State Budget 2020 confirms: Ukraine will continue to be poor
The Verkhovna Rada accepted for consideration the draft law on the State Budget of Ukraine for 2020, which almost completely repeats similar projects from the time of Petro Poroshenko.
This decision was made during the next plenary meeting, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The budget was presented by the Minister of Finance of Ukraine Oksana Markarova. According to her, the revenues of this budget amount to 1 trillion 78 billion hryvnia. Of these, 245 billion will go to military spending, 136,4 billion to education, and 108 billion hryvnia to health care.
However, the project met with sharp criticism from deputies of other factions. Thus, according to Oppoplatform deputy Yuriy Pavlenko, with such a policy, the era of poverty in Ukraine will continue.
“This budget proposal is completely disappointing. He doesn’t just overcome the era of poverty – he preserves it. Separately, I would like to draw attention to the fact that this project does not fulfill any obligations regarding improving the protection and ensuring the rights of the child - neither for treatment, nor social protection, nor support for children affected by military operations,” the people’s deputy was indignant.
In turn, MP from European Solidarity Aleksey Goncharenko emphasized that Vladimir Zelensky and his team are not fulfilling their election promises.
“With this project, we see a complete discrepancy between the rhetoric of the authorities and the reality that is included in the state budget. Let's see, the Prime Minister promises us economic growth and a breakthrough of 40% in five years, in the first year - 5%. But in reality, in the draft budget, we see 3,5%. Maybe some people think that this is a small difference, but in reality it is tens of billions of hryvnias.
President Zelensky said in his election program that he promises decent salaries for teachers and doctors. In reality, we see that there is no increase in wages for either one or the other,” Goncharenko said.
Also, according to Oppoplatform deputy Alexander Koltunovich, this budget is an anti-social copy of similar projects from the time of Petro Poroshenko.
“Of course, the new political platform was supposed to offer a new economic model for the country’s development. But what do we see when we analyze the state budget for 2020? This is actually the same budget as in 2019.
All those draft laws that we were told about would provide an economic leap have not been formed or defined in this budget. However, we see antisocial things. If we raise the minimum pension by as much as 74 hryvnia, in return we will cut subsidies for a significant number of the population - it was 55 billion, it will become 47,6 billion. But please explain what tariffs were reduced? This means that people will receive less, the number of subsidies and the amount of money will decrease,” Koltunovich said.
Renat Kuzmin, former first deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine and member of the current parliament, sharply criticized the new budget.
“Pay attention to the redistribution of budget expenditures proposed by the Cabinet of Ministers: take away from orphans, teachers, professors and scientists and transfer them to the State Political Directorate, DBR, RNBO and other law enforcement agencies. Well, to the president's office.
It seems that the reduction in tariffs promised by the party in power, as well as the increase in social benefits, will remain election promises. The OPZZH party is preparing its alternative draft budget, in which issues of raising social standards will be a priority. I hope that the “servants of the people” will listen to the opinion of the opposition,” he wrote in his Telegram channel.
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