Financial decentralisation allowed local self-government bodies to approve local budgets before the adoption of the State Budget as the main financial document of the country. As of 9 January, 8,940 out of 9,016 local budgets have been approved, i.e. 99.2% of them, informed Hennadii Zubko, Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine.

“The Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Zhytomyr Oblasts were the first to approve local budgets. Thus, the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast approved the budget on 1 December 2017, and the Kharkiv Oblast – on 7 December, Local Self-Governance Day,” said Hennadii Zubko.

According to him, “the temperature over the country” is not the same. 76 local budgets have not been yet approved. There is also an open question on the budget adoption in the AHs, where the elections took place on 24 December 2017.

One oblast budget (Volyn), 6 budgets of cities of oblast significance, 4 rayon budgets, 49 AH budgets, including 46 budgets of AHs established in 2017, 3 budgets of towns of rayon significance, 1 rural settlement budget, and 12 village budgets have not been approved. The Vinnytsya, Kirovohrad, Luhansk and Ternopil Oblasts have not approved one budget each.

“I would like to stress that amalgamated hromadas should hold the first elections in time during the year, and not at the end. It will facilitate the timely adoption of hromadas’ estimates,” emphasised the official.