KIEV, Oct. 4 – Ukraine needs to cut social spending to avoid a Greece-like fiscal problem, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said Tuesday, defending his push towards approval of a controversial bill in Parliament.

This is the first time a top Ukrainian official has mentioned Greece, whose looming sovereign debt default may trigger the second wave of world financial crisis, underscoring the level of fiscal problem that Ukraine faces.

So far officials, including President Viktor Yanukovych, have tried to paint a better fiscal picture suggesting that Ukraine fares much better than Greece.

“We are going to have a budget deficit bigger than in Greece,” Azarov said Tuesday describing a scenario in which the government fails to get social spending under control. “Do I have to explain that this is an unfortunate fate?”

Azarov insisted on the approval of the controversial bill that changes legislation by letting the government decide on benefit payments for more than 10 million people. The bill triggered a massive angry protest last month.

“We don’t have any other sources of revenue, only the budget,” Azarov said.

But another problem the government faces is a growing anger among those groups of people whose benefits may be slashed, and that can prove to be contagious and spread quickly throughout Ukraine.

Although Azarov signed a memorandum of understanding with leaders of both groups, there is a growing distrust among grass-root members of the organizations.

Anatoliy Kosenko, the leaders of the Donetsk branch of the Nobody But Us civic movement, said his and other groups will hold a massive convention in Kiev on October 14 to discuss the bill, and potentially even attaching broader political demands.

“We are potentially a very rich country with developed infrastructure and educated people. Why do we live in poverty?” Kosenko said in an interview with Ostriv online newspaper. “These issues persist, and we will raise them, no matter whether the government is comfortable with them or not.”

The convention is expected to demand early Parliamentary elections, and will also set a strategy for unfolding civic unrest throughout the country if the government ignores demands and goes ahead with cutting benefits.

The government needs to cut the spending to qualify for resumption of $15.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The bill, known as No. 9127, calls for scrapping separate legislation outlining social benefits to various groups of people. It was quietly approved in the first reading on September 9, and was supposed to be approved in the final reading on September 20, but the massive spontaneous protest had postponed the legislation indefinitely.

The government has been pushing through the bill and seeking the right to decide on the benefits because it alleges that many of current recipients may be receiving the benefits illegally.

But the attempts to approve the bill in the final reading triggered the massive protest involving up to 3,000 people, mostly veterans of Soviet war in Afghanistan and Chernobyl clean-up operation workers, in front on Parliament building.

A handful of protesters managed to break through the police cordon to briefly enter the Parliament building, smashing some windows in the process, before retreating after lawmakers had postponed the bill. (tl/ez)