Servicing Ukraine's national debt accounts for a third of its budget, which is four times more than defense spending.
Economist Viktor Skarshevsky spoke about this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The cost of servicing Ukraine’s external debt is about 6-8% of its GDP. At the same time, the economy is growing by only 2-3%. And the average debt repayment period is 5 years, so when they say that our children and grandchildren will pay off the national debt, this is nonsense. We will pay,” the expert said.
He also suggested looking at budget expenditures to service the public debt.
“For 2018, this is 305 billion hryvnia or 30% of all state budget expenditures. This amount is approximately 4 times higher than defense spending. Politicians say on TV that our priority is defense, but if you look at the budget, it is clear that the priority is debt servicing,” summed up Skarshevsky.