Ministry of Finance reports to Government on settling funding issues for technical schools

On March 23, Deputy Minister of Finance Roman Kachur reported to the Government on the progress of solving a funding issue for technical schools by providing a stabilizing subsidy from the state budget to local budgets.

To implement the decentralization reform, the financial resources of local communities were increased by 35.2 billion hryvnas in 2016 compared to 2015. The local communities also received powers to manage technical schools as well as funds to finance them. Thus, they can ensure technical training according to the needs of the regional labor market.

750 technical schools have been transferred to the local communities so far. According to the analysis conducted by the Ministry of Finance, 139 local communities have planned funding for technical schools in their budgets. At the same time, only 9 local communities (in charge for 16 vocational schools) did not plan such expenses and did not finance vocational schools reporting to them. Due to this development, on February 4 the Government decided to provide a stabilizing subsidy to local budgets amounting 500 million hryvnas meant to settle the funding issue in the communities in need. On March 17, the Parliament’s committee for budgetary affairs approved this decision.

On the following day, the first 200 million hryvnas were transferred to the respective local budgets. Next tranches shall be transferred within the coming four months with each one amounting 75 million hryvnas. According to the Government’s decision, regional administrations should distribute this money between cities of regional significance whose financial resources are really limited.