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Outgoing lawmakers OK 2013 budget draft
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Dec. 6 – Outgoing lawmakers without debate and at their last session Thursday voted to approve a 2013 budget draft that significantly expands Ukraine’s deficit and predicts the economy will be growing robustly next year.

The development means the government will go ahead with planned spending in January without needing to adjust or cut expenditures.

It also allows hundreds of regional and local budgets be approved throughout the country by the end of the year, avoiding delays.

Opposition groups criticized the draft for being handled by the government in secrecy, for being out of touch with reality and for predicting unrealistically high economic growth.

“No one has seen the budget draft,” Arseniy Yatseniuk, the leader of the opposition Batkivshchyna party, said. “They have voted for something, and will probably spend the next three days quietly adding something and re-writing it.”

Both, President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, praised the approval of the budget, but said it will probably be amended as soon as in April 2013.

“The budget drafting and amending is a constant process and that’s why we never stop it,” Yanukovych said, according to his press service. “We always make amendments to the budget in the course of a year.”

“Usually, we do it based on the results of the first quarter or based on the results of the first half in order to use the budget money more efficiently and in a rational way,” Yanukovych said.

The budget deficit is projected at 50.4 billion hryvnias, or 3.2% of the gross domestic product, in 2013, about twice as much as was originally planned for 2012.

The government forecast that the economy will be growing 3.4% on the year in 2013, an optimistic forecast of the economic growth next year.

“Some ministries were overly cautious while drafting the budget and have somewhat lowered economic indicators,” Azarov said, adding that the pessimistic forecasts had been corrected.

“This is an anti-crisis budget and its main task is to make sure the economy is growing in the time of the world economy going through financial and economic crises,” Azarov said.

The government, which was dismissed by Yanukovych on the same day the Cabinet had submitted the budget bill to Parliament, forecast budget revenue at 361.5 billion hryvnias in 2013, while budget spending at 410.7 billion hryvnias. (tl/ez)




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