​Minister of Finance O. Danyliuk: “We have enhanced financial capacities of the local budgets”

On October 24, Minister of Finance Oleksandr Danyliuk participated in the meeting of the Council for Regional Development chaired by President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.

In his speech, the Minister of Finance stressed the importance of the further budget decentralization reform, reported about the results of the first stage of the reform and further support for the amalgamated hromadas and development of the regions as planned in the draft state budget for 2018.

“Our goal is to implement the decentralization reform in such a way that each hromadas in Ukraine has enough funds and capacities as well as takes full responsibility for what is going on at the local level”, the Minister of Finance said at the beginning of his speech.

One of the crucial results achieved at the first stage of the budget decentralization reform is the higher financial capacity of the local budgets. Local authorities have received additional resources to execute delegated tasks as well as their self-government functions.

As O. Danyliuk pointed out, the local budgets received almost 135 billion hryvnas in the period from January till September 2017, which is almost equal to 80% of the total annual revenues planned by the local councils. The increase of the total revenues of the local budgets in the same period of 2016 was equal to 30% which makes 31.1 billion hryvnas.

Minister of Finance O. Danyliuk also asked the heads of oblast state administrations to pay more attention to the uneven increase of the revenues of local budgets. Significant disparities in the level of social and economic development as well as in the quality of infrastructure, the scale of implemented reforms and local capacities still persist between regions.

“More and more regions demonstrate their readiness to pursue reforms. But this readiness is different. Our firm point is that local authorities shall bear responsibility for the proper funding of public institutions and facilities located on their territory. It must come along with the even distribution of the financial resources between all regions of Ukraine. We must jointly develop an optimal model which would meet the needs of hromadas and each Ukrainian citizen”, the Minister of Finance said.