Ukrainian kinder prime minister caught in a lie
The new draft of the Ukrainian budget is no different from the budgets of the previous government, so the promises of the new Prime Minister Alexei Goncharuk about GDP growth turned out to be a lie.
MP from Batkivshchyna Ivan Krulko stated this during a plenary meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“If you analyze the budgets for 2017, 2018 and the budget submitted in 2019, there are no differences. This is a budget that was not prepared by the new government, but which was carried over from the previous government, as I understand it.
The 2020 budget provides for GDP growth in 2020 by 3,3%, in 2021 by 3,6%, and in 2022 by 4,1%. I have a question: where is the 40% GDP growth that Prime Minister Goncharuk spoke about when he was appointed to the post? We expected there to be a 40% increase, but this is not the case.
The second issue is the cost of living, which affects the level of pensions, minimum wages, and tariff categories for workers throughout the public sector. The minimum cost of living is increasing by 62 hryvnia, although, according to the calculations of the same Cabinet of Ministers, it should have been 4251 hryvnia, that is, the Cabinet of Ministers itself said that people can actually live on the cost of living given in the budget, which is half what it should be They can’t do it for a month.
Another point is the minimum pension, which from January 1, 2020 is set at 1638 hryvnia, and according to the calculations of the same Cabinet of Ministers, it should be 3094 hryvnia. So the question arises: is this the end of the era of poverty or a continuation of why people actually kicked out the previous government during the elections and voted for a new government?” the deputy addressed the audience.
At the same time, the deputy of the “Opposition Platform - For Life” Alexander Koltunovich noted that almost half of the new budget of Ukraine will again be formed from external debts.
“This means that these are budgets not for development, but for consumption. For example, I would like to draw attention to the debt issue. We are always told that we need to repay external debts. In 2020, 438 billion hryvnia will be spent on servicing and repaying previous loans. But we have more than 383 billion hryvnia in our budget revenues, and almost 40% of our budget revenues are formed primarily through new loans, and this is the worst norm taken from the previous budget,” he explained.
The statements of previous speakers were also supported by the people's deputy from European Solidarity, Alexei Goncharenko, expressing bewilderment where tens of billions of budget funds were “lost.”
“We see a very interesting thing - a crazy discrepancy between what we are told and what is actually laid out. When candidate for prime minister Alexei Goncharuk spoke from this rostrum, he actually named only one figure in his speech, which he, as prime minister, is going to implement. This is an increase of 5% of GDP next year, then by 7, and in 5 years together – 40, we have all heard this. Then the draft state budget is submitted, and there is a figure of 3,3% GDP growth.
Maybe someone will say: what's the difference? Dear citizens of Ukraine, this difference is tens of billions of hryvnia. Where did they go? Why does the prime minister promise us 5%, and then it turns out that he is submitting a completely different budget?” Goncharenko was indignant.
Let us recall that earlier economic expert Viktor Skarshevsky stated that in the draft State Budget of Ukraine for 2019, the cost of living was practically not increased, and this would mean that the new government will continue the social policy of the previous one.
Also, former Minister of Economy of Ukraine Viktor Suslov noted the increase in the Pension Fund deficit - today it makes up at least 15% of the country's annual budget.
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