Government initiating halving of 2014 budget deficit
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine plans to halve the budget deficit for 2014, the limit of which was set at UAH 71.56 billion under the current law on the national budget for 2014, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has said.
"A law on a reduction of expenses of the national budget will be submitted to parliament. This will concern halving the [budget] deficit. All macroeconomic indicators, all revenues of the national budget formed by the Yanukovych-Azarov government are not only not in line with the real situation, but they are swollen and cannot be fulfilled," he said, speaking at the parliament on Tuesday.
He added that the country would face a very difficult period of reducing social standards, reduction of expenses, while the measures will help seeing economic growth in the medium-term outlook.
Yatseniuk said that the government has drawn up a draft law on state procurement.
"The volumes of galloping corruption that existed in the government were first linked to non-transparent and manual management of the budget via state procurement," the premier said.
He added that until the new law on the state procurement is passed with a transparent mechanism for spending budget funds, the Ukrainian government would not give out a single kopeck in assignments.
