The Government will enhance social protection for citizens to compensate the increased energy tariffs

The Government will enhance social protection for citizens to compensate the increased energy tariffs. 

Following its decision to speed up the increase of the energy tariffs adopted on April 27, the Government also decided to upgrade the social welfare standards to a higher extent than originally planned in the state budget for 2016. According to the draft legislation approved by the Government, the social welfare payments should be increased by 10% starting from December 1, 2016 (instead of 6% originally planned in the state budget for 2016).

Additional expenses amounting 6.7 billion hryvnas should be mainly covered by the increased tax revenues from the JSC “Ukrgazvydobuvannya” resulting from the amended gas price which will be increased starting from May 1, 2016. Thus, the increase social welfare costs will be balanced by the increased tax revenues not related to money emission and will not lead to the increase of the state budget deficit which is set to be 3.1% of the GDP in 2016.

“This will enable us to increase support to our citizens without jeopardizing the public finance”, Minister of Finance Olexandr Danylyuk commented.