The experts updated the Methodological recommendations on the organisation of work of the newly formed amalgamated hromadas for the approval of the single budget. (DOWNLOAD).

New financial management opportunities are opened for AHs, where the first local elections have been held or will be held in 2018.

In particular, the final clauses of the Law of Ukraine "On Voluntary Amalgamation of Hromadas" stipulate that the village, settlement, city council, elected by the amalgamated hromada in 2018, shall have the right to make a decision on approval of the AH budget for 2018, which will include the budgets of the respective hromadas. Therefore, it is possible to form and implement a single budget of the newly elected council, and not to separately perform the budgets of all amalgamated local councils until the end of the budget period.

The transition to a single budget allows not only to simplify the organisation of implementation of the budgets of the newly formed AHs, but also to form an effective human resources policy, to ensure the transfer of the commonly-owned facilities by the councils to the newly established hromada, and to begin a gradual transfer from common ownership of hromadas of villages, settlements, cities to the ownership of such AHs of the corresponding budgetary institutions located on their territory, according to the delimitation between the budgets, defined by the Budget Code of Ukraine, etc.

In order to clarify the feasibility and assistance in organising the process of transition to a single budget, Yanina Kazyuk, financial decentralisation coordinator of the Central Reform Office under MinRegion, and Svitlana Demydenko, expert of the Financial Monitoring Group of the Central Reform Office under MinRegion (with the support of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme) updated Methodological recommendations on the organisation of work on the approval of a single budget.

We hope that “10 steps to a single budget” and approval of the single budget will allow local self-government bodies to effectively organise their activities this year, promptly identify problematic issues and focus on the main aspects, when preparing the budget for 2019.

The full version is available in Ukrainian – please click HERE