Crisis will worsen without amendment of budget - Yushchenko

Viktor Yushchenko

Speaking in an interview with newspaper Delo, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called as utopian the macroeconomic indicators the government planned for 2010.

In his opinion, a GDP rise of 0.4% and inflation of 9.5% predicted by the government are unrealistic.

The President reminded that the Ukrainian industry fell by 32% and construction by 57% during the quarter. "And the government is declaring fulfillment of the budget by almost 100%. Thus, on the one hand we have serious decline tendencies, and on the other a budget counted on the basis of 2008, which is being implemented. This means that we witness a virtual model or deliberately ill-considered steps," the President says.

Yushchenko emphasized that the budget is being fulfilled at the National Bank's cost. "The government's correspondent account is almost empty. If earlier there was UAH 17 billion on the account, now there is just 2 billion.

That is why the budget is being fulfilled at the cost of the central bank, which implemented the annual norm of relations with the budget in four months, and this may lead to uncontrollable inflation," he said.

Referring to the situation that advance payments to the budget are permanently growing, and have already reached UAH 12 billion, and arrears on VAT refunds reached a record of UAH 13.5 billion, the President drew the conclusion that in the economic crisis conditions the economy paid to the budget on the whole about UAH 25 billion of the working capital.

"If there are no amendments to the budget, the crisis will be worsening," Viktor Yushchenko stressed.

UKRINFORM