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PM: Budget will wait until after election
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Dec. 16 – Ukraine will not have its 2010 budget approved until after the next presidential election, which means at least a three-month delay, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said Wednesday.

The failure to approve the budget is one of the biggest obstacles standing on the way of resumption of a $16.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

It also underscores the fact that Tymoshenko essentially runs a minority government that lacks support of majority lawmakers and is not capable of approving any legislation.

“The 2010 budget will most likely be approved after the presidential campaign,” Tymoshenko said addressing a rally in Kiev. “Today competition between presidential candidates simply does not allow concentrating the needed number of votes in Parliament.”

The Ukrainian law requires the budget for next year be approved before the end of the previous year as the country’s fiscal year coincides with the calendar year.

The failure to approve the 2010 budget before the end of December means the government will be restricted from spending more than 1/12 of the country’s overall spending in 2009 each month next year.

The presidential election is scheduled on January 17, 2010, while the runoff between the two most popular candidates will probably take place on February 7.

“Most simple calculations show that the next budget will not be approved before April of next year,” Viacheslav Kyrylenko, the leader of For Ukraine! group in Parliament, said. “Who will be manipulating with state finances?”

President Viktor Yushchenko, who has opposed the Tymoshenko economic policy for the past two years, said the failure to approve the budget poses not only economic risk, but also political threat.

“The lack of an approved budget for the next year bears a number of serious threats,” Iryna Vannikova, the spokeswoman for Yushchenko, said Wednesday.

The economic risk includes the failure to adjust social spending for the people in January 2010 as had been required by legislation that had been recently approved, Vannikova said.

But the political threats include that the Tymoshenko government will be in position to manually increase spending on certain groups, such as teachers, that will play a crucial roles in vote counting in territorial electoral commissions.

That may benefit Tymoshenko among other candidates running for the presidency, Vannikova said.

“This would allow the government to encourage certain categories of people, especially those who the voting and vote counting depend on, while at the same time to disregard interests of others,” Vannikova said. (tl/ez)




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