Eight months of the year appeared to be fruitful for the local budgets of Ukraine – their own revenues in January-August increased by UAH 29.2 billion and now make up UAH 177.9 billion. This means that financial decentralisation continues to increase hromadas’ muscle resources, said Vyacheslav Nehoda, First Deputy Head of MinRegion.

“It is hromadas’ financial cushion that enables them to address most local issues. But this is not the main indicator of budget decentralisation. The main thing is that hromadas have become interested in increasing their revenues. They learn how to prepare development projects, they create conditions for business development and, as a result, new jobs are created, they improve investment literacy and culture to be competitive. It is a good start of the first years of decentralisation in building economically developed hromadas and the country as a whole,” said Vyacheslav Nehoda.

For comparison, not so long ago, in 2014, local budget revenues amounted to only UAH 68.6 billion. Today, only the personal income tax inflow to local budgets made up UAH 105.6 billion. And if we compare these revenues with the corresponding period last year, the growth is UAH 19 billion or 21.9%. The Donetsk (26.8%), Kyiv (24.2%) and Ternopil (23.5%) Oblasts have the highest PIT surplus.

Other indicators are also growing. For example, land payments amounted to UAH 22.2 billion (+UAH 4.1 billion or +22.4%). The Zakarpattia (60.6%), Luhansk (39.1%) and Rivne (34.5%) Oblasts provided the highest growth rates.

Actual single tax revenues amounted to UAH 23.2 billion (+UAH 4.3 billion or +22.5%), real estate tax amounted to UAH 3.4 billion, and revenue growth is +33.2%.

More information on the results of decentralisation and local self-government reform is available in a monthly Monitoring.