Ukraine's budget surplus reaches UAH 8.8 bln in Jan-Sept - NBU

The surplus of Ukraine's national budget in January-September 2015 reached UAH 8.8 billion, while its deficit from a year ago was UAH 40.1 billion, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said in a macroeconomic and monetary review published on October 30.

The central bank said that the national budget had a moderate surplus of UAH 1.1 billion in September 2015, despite the decline in revenue growth and the increase in expenses.

The regulator said that the slow in growth of revenues to 53.9% year-over-year (47.3% in January-September 47.3%) occurred due to the large decline in the growth of tax revenues, to 31.2% compared to 70% in August.

The NBU said that this is linked to the effect of the comparison base.

According to the review, growth in VAT revenue fell considerably, to 7.8% year-over-year compared to 80.1% in August.

A large increase in VAT refunding was registered, UAH 7.6 billion in September compared to UAH 4.4 billion in August.

The regulator said that in September, non-tax revenues soared by more than 2.5-fold (by 60.3% in January-September) along with the payment of UAH 8 billion by the NBU and the over-fulfillment of revenue targets by budget-funded institutions.

The NBU said that the growth in the expenses of the national budget in September accelerated to 27.3% (25% in January-September). The expenses target was fulfilled by 92.1% in January-September 2015 (87.8% in September), which is evidence of a lack of financing of the annual general expense plan.