The Ministry of Development of Communities and Territories jointly with the Association of Ukrainian Cities advocate the interests of theamalgamated hromadas, which risked not switching to direct interbudgetary relations in 2020. Vyacheslav Nehoda, Deputy Minister of Development of Communities and Territories, announced this on his Facebook page.

“The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Budget has largely supported the proposals of MinRegion and the Association of Ukrainian Cities to resolve the problem that has arisen for the newly formed AHs in terms of their direct interbudgetary relations in 2020,” Vyacheslav Nehoda wrote.

He specified that these were 108 AHs and 68 accessions to AHs, which were outside the 2020 draft state budget until yesterday's meeting of the Committee.

Out of this number, 82 amalgamated hromadas are missing from the perspective plans for the formation of territories of hromadas of the oblasts. Therefore, there is no reason to recognise them as capable and transfer them to direct interbudgetary relations with the State Budget in 2020.

It is well known that the Prime Minister of Ukraine instructed the regions to resolve this issue and to make changes to the perspective plans for hromadas’ formation. MinRegion also repeatedly informed the oblast authorities about such danger and called for the perspective plans to be finalised as soon as possible.

Another 20 AHs are envisaged in the perspective plans for the formation of territories of hromadas. But in view of the fact that according to CEC’s decision the first elections will be held in these hromadas in December, the Finance Ministry also did not include them in the 2020 State Budget draft.

For the same reason, another 6 AHs (Cherkaska AH of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Putyvlska AH of the Sumy Oblast, Andriyivska, Malynivska, Lyubytska, Novomykolayivska AHs of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast), recognised as capable (CMU Decree No 836-r dated 07.11.2018), were not included into draft state budget by the Ministry of Finance.

68 territorial hromadas that joined the existing AHs did not get to the country's main budget estimate. It should also be noted that not all of the accessions made under the simplified procedure of the city of oblast significance (without elections) are included in interbudgetary transfers.

How do you address the problems of these amalgamated and accessed hromadas? The stance of MinRegion is unambiguous – to include in the State Budget of 2020 all AHs, where the elections were held or will take place in 2019. This solution will allow hromadas to develop, taking full advantage of the tools of local self-government reform and decentralisation of powers.

With this proposal, MinRegion has officially addressed the Committee on State Building, Local Governance, Regional and Urban Development, as well as the Parliamentary Committee on Budget.

The final decision is up to the Ministry of Finance and the Parliament.