The Verkhovna Rada has voted for the 2025 budget in the first reading. 247 MPs voted in favour, according to the channel of MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.
The priority of the next year's budget will be security and defence, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. All taxes paid by people and businesses were promised to be used to strengthen defence and military capabilities.
‘We will allocate more than UAH 2.2 trillion for these needs, which is about 26% of GDP. This is UAH 46 billion more than in 2024. In total, state budget expenditures are planned to amount to over UAH 3.6 trillion, which is UAH 535 billion more than this year. The general fund revenues are planned to amount to UAH 2.7 billion, which is UAH 411 billion more than this year,’ the Prime Minister explained.
MP Oleksiy Honcharenko noted that the current draft law does not contain any increase in social payments.
The government proposed the following key macro-financial indicators
- GDP growth by 2.7% (to UAH 8,466.3bn)
- inflation - 9.5%.
- average monthly salary - UAH 24,389
- the minimum wage will remain at UAH 8,000
- hryvnia to dollar exchange rate - 45 UAH per 1 USD
- budget deficit - UAH 1640.6 billion (UAH 1549.5 billion) or 19.4% of GDP
According to MP Iryna Herashchenko, the subsistence minimum is
- general - UAH 2,920
- for persons who have lost their ability to work - UAH 2,361
- for able-bodied persons - UAH 3,028.
The budget will continue to receive personal income tax from military personnel.
Spending on education will be lower than in 2024: UAH 167 billion.
‘Most of it - more than UAH 103 billion - will be spent on salaries for teachers. At the same time, the government is planning a number of additional programmes for 2025: UAH 2.9 billion for nutrition for primary school students, UAH 305 million for education for students with special educational needs,' Herashchenko explained.
UAH 323.9 million will be allocated to restore destroyed educational institutions. Another UAH 37.4 million will be spent on the Superheroes School programme, which is the education of children undergoing long-term treatment. Another UAH 12.6 million is planned to be spent on educational services for children abroad.
Healthcare spending will increase from UAH 7 billion to UAH 214 billion. In particular, UAH 175 billion is to be spent on the implementation of the medical guarantee programme. UAH 11.75 billion will be spent on the procurement of medicines for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, oncology, rare orphan diseases and cardiovascular diseases.
After being reviewed by the committee, the MPs proposed a number of changes. An amendment to the draft law was introduced yesterday to prevent the increase in prosecutors' salaries.
According to its chairman, Roksolana Pidlasa, the committee also proposed
- all sources of filling the Road Fund (this is UAH 43.2 billion next year) to be directed to the general budget fund - for priority needs, first of all, the needs of national security and defence
- at least UAH 2 billion should be allocated for humanitarian demining
- exclude the proposal to transfer bank accounts of hospitals to the Treasury
- From 1 April 2025, the Verkhovna Rada apparatus will be transferred to a graded remuneration system
- the so-called Chornobyl pension/surcharge to unemployed pensioners in the resettlement zone will be paid only to those who actually lived in the exclusion zone from 1986 to 1993 (about UAH 15 billion)
- reconsider the idea of introducing bonuses for local court judges in 2025 and revise the expenditures for their support accordingly
- consider allocating funding (UAH 4.8 billion) for new passenger railcars
- consider allocating 4% of personal income tax to the budgets of ATCs (amalgamated territorial community) and at the same time abandoning the subvention from the state budget to regional budgets to compensate for the difference in utility tariffs
- decide on the feasibility of transferring reverse transfers from local government budgets to the state budget, i.e. leave UAH 12.9 billion to local government budgets.