8567 or 95% of the total number of local budgets have been approved in Ukraine. 1172 budgets out of them have direct interbudgetary relations with the state budget (94.7%), informed Halyna Markovych, coordinator of the “Local budgets” direction of the Project Office for Sectoral Decentralisation, basing upon the data as of 25 December 2017.

It should be noted that in accordance with the norms of the Budget Code of Ukraine, local budgets must be approved by 25 December of the year preceding the planned one.

According to the expert, all local budgets are approved in the Zhytomyr and Kharkiv Oblasts. Over 98% of the budgets have been approved in the Kyiv, Vinnytsya, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Luhansk, Kirovohrad, Odesa, Ternopil and Cherkasy Oblasts.

As of 25.12.2017 the following budgets have been approved:

• all oblast budgets except the Volyn Oblast;
• Kyiv city budget;
• 138 budgets of the cities of oblast importance (out of 148);
• 442 rayon budgets (out of 464);
• 574 budgets of amalgamated hromadas (out of 614, not considering the budgets of the AHs, where the first local elections took place on 24.12.2017)
• 144 budgets of towns of rayon importance (out of 156);
• 399 rural settlement budgets (out of 422);
• 6825 village budgets (out of 7108).

“The law on the state budget for 2018 was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in the second reading on 7 December 2017. Local authorities had plenty of time to prepare and make timely decisions on the appropriate local budget. Failure to comply with the terms of consideration of the draft and make a decision on the budget is the violation of the law,” noted Halyna Markovych.