The Budget Committee has recommended the draft state budget for 2025 and budgetary conclusions for the government for the first reading, including directing all sources of funding for the Road Fund (43.2 billion UAH) into the general budget fund for urgent needs, primarily for national security and defense, reported the committee chair, Roksolana Pidlasa.
"We expect it to be reviewed in the chamber in the coming days," she wrote on Facebook on Monday.
According to her, among other key changes, at least 2 billion UAH will be allocated for humanitarian demining, the proposal to transfer hospital accounts in banks to the Treasury will be excluded, and the apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada will be transitioned to a graded salary system starting April 1, 2025.
Additionally, Pidlasa noted that it is proposed to grant the so-called "Chornobyl pension" (an additional payment for non-working pensioners in the resettlement zone) only to those who truly lived in the exclusion zone from 1986 to 1993. "The cost of pension payments to new 'settlers' is about 15 billion UAH," the committee chair specified.
She indicated that the committee also recommends that the government reconsider the introduction of bonuses for local court judges in 2025 and accordingly reassess expenditures for their support, as well as consider allocating funding (4.8 billion UAH) for new passenger cars.
Finally, she stated that the draft budget conclusions include an initiative to allocate 4% of the personal income tax (PIT) to the budgets of united territorial communities, abandoning the subsidy from the state budget to regional budgets to compensate for the difference in utility tariffs, and leaving 12.9 billion UAH for local government budgets.
People's Deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak reported on Telegram that the committee rejected proposals to abandon the 37% salary increase for prosecutors, but at the same time removed funds for the cashback program.
In his opinion, reviewing the draft with 2098 amendments will require two session days this week. "Evening for amendments and morning for voting," he wrote.
If the Verkhovna Rada approves these budget conclusions, it will mean the adoption of the state budget in the first reading, after which it will be sent to the government for consideration of these conclusions and submission to parliament for the second reading.