Almost third of budget revenues to be spent on defense and debt payments – Jaresko

Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - 17:22 (EET) Section: Latest news

Ukraine’s draft state budget for 2015 envisages UAH 82.9 billion for defense.
Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said this while presenting a respective bill to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
“Expenditures on defense and security, which are the number one priority, taking into account aggression in eastern Ukraine, have been significantly increased in relation to GDP and in relation to total expenditures. We include UAH 82.9 billion and an additional UAH 6 billion in guarantees in the budget. We also add UAH 1.5 billion from the social fund and from the sale of confiscated property,” she said.
According to Jaresko, Ukraine will see a difficult year, “in which 30% of expenditures are directed at defense and servicing debts.”
The minister said that the second problem was a rapid increase in expenditures on servicing the debt. “The devaluation has increased payments on our external borrowings by 50%. We also have a rapid accumulation of domestic debt in past years (the capitalization of Naftogaz, banks and the Deposit Guarantee Fund), which, in total, almost doubled our debt servicing costs, compared to the previous year,” Jaresko said.