As part of the working group on budget of the Donor Board on decentralisation, all international projects, together with the relevant associations of local self-government, MinRegion, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Social Policy and the Ministry of Education and Science should work out proposals for the budgeting of 2019, including, in particular, the appropriateness of amending budget legislation. At present, our joint task is to provide stable and guaranteed financing of local budgets, which will ensure further progress in decentralisation and implementation of projects in the field of education, healthcare, social and administrative services, etc, said Hennadii Zubko, Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine.

He noted that this should be a common stance for further development of financial decentralisation. “This will enable MinRegion, together with donors, to prepare a roadmap for the implementation of projects funded at the expense of the budget of 2019, and to enter a joint meeting of two specialised committees of the Verkhovna Rada – on state construction, regional policy and local self-government, as well as on budget. Our common goal is a capable, efficient and transparent system of public finance management at the regional and local levels,” said Hennadii Zubko.

In addition, Hennadii Zubko emphasised that the main tasks comprise the introduction of systemic analysis of local budgets of all levels (including: budgets of non-amalgamated hromadas; rayon budgets; AH budgets; oblast budgets, etc.). “For this purpose, we, together with the Ministry of Finance, need to ensure openness and access to the reporting data on the indices of local budget revenues and expenditures (in the context of all local budgets). Moreover – to ensure the exchange of information between the State Fiscal Service authorities and local self-government bodies, in particular AHs, in terms of accrued sums of budget-filling taxes and duties, as well as tax debt in the context of taxpayers of the respective territories (rayons, cities of oblast significance, AHs). Another task is to improve intergovernmental relations in terms of reducing the disparities between local budgets and allocation of all investment subventions (in particular, subventions for socio-economic development) under a transparent formula mechanism,” said Hennadii Zubko.

The Vice Prime Minister made a special emphasis on the importance and necessity of applying gender-based approaches to local budgeting, since they are directed, first of all, at the efficiency of budget funds’ usage.

In his turn, Berend de Groot, Head of Cooperation of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, co-chair of the Donor Board, said: “The success of territorial decentralisation depends on budget decentralisation. The Donor Board coordinates this work, and we already have several studies and monitoring of the process of financial decentralisation on the ground. Therefore, we will take these results into account when working with MinRegion on a decision to amend the budget law for the next year. Hopefully, we will have significant contributions to the Budget Code-2019.”

Hennadii Zubko expressed his gratitude to all donor organisations and Berend de Groot for the constant fruitful work on the decentralisation reform. “During our joint work the MinRegion’s team, specialised associations, experts, partners from different countries managed to unite, which directly influenced the success of the decentralisation process in Ukraine,” he said.

Within the framework of the Donor Board meeting, the projects of international technical assistance, that carry out their activity in the sphere of finance and budgeting of local self-government bodies, were presented. In particular, the monitoring of the financial decentralisation process, results of DOBRE Programme’s evaluation of financial management of 50 hromadas, DESPRO’s financial capability calculator, the GRB (Gender Responsive Budgeting in Ukraine) project, EDGE “Expert Deployment for Governance and Economic Growth” project "results in the “Local Finance and Budgeting” sector.

It should be noted that the Donor Board under MinRegion on the implementation of the reform of local self-government and the territorial organisation of power in Ukraine is a coordinating hub of the reform, which brings together all technical assistance projects within the framework of decentralisation.

Namely representatives of the Council of Europe office in Ukraine, the EU Delegation in Ukraine, the Swiss Cooperation Office in Ukraine; Embassies of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Denmark, Canada, France, Estonia in Ukraine; offices of USAID, OSCE, UNDP, OECD, UN Women; representatives of technical assistance projects: the U-LEAD with Europe Programme, DESPRO, DOBRE, EDGE, EU4LOGICA, GRB (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Project; all-Ukrainian associations of local self-government bodies.