Ukraine to adopt record-breaking budget for 2024

The Ukrainian government will approve the budget for 2024 on September 15.

It will be a record-breaking budget in the country's history in terms of spending,s said, Prime reports quoting  Verkhovna Rada MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak as saying.

Earlier Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the priority in the budget of Ukraine for 2024 will be defence spending, it is planned to spend at least $ 43 billion on it.

"Today the government will approve the budget for the next 2024. The figures will be a little later, but it will be the budget approved with the largest expenditures in the history of Ukraine," Zheleznyak wrote in his Telegram channel.

Earlier, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal claimed that the country had allocated 100 per cent of taxes collected from citizens and businesses to the military. In addition to these expenses, according to the Prime Minister, there is also military aid from allies and donations from philanthropists. The head of the Rada's budget committee, Roksolana Pidlasa, said that Ukraine had increased military spending since the beginning of the year. According to her statement, every second hryvnya from the country's budget in 2023 is allocated for defence.

Ukraine's parliament passed the 2023 budget with a deficit of 1.296 trillion hryvnias ($35.1 billion). According to Shmyhal, the draft budget for 2023 envisaged revenues at 1.28 trillion hryvnia (about $34.6 billion), expenditures - 2.57 trillion hryvnia (about $69.6 billion), the monthly budget deficit was estimated at $3 billion, which Ukraine was supposed to close with foreign borrowings.

In April 2023, Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said that the Ukrainian budget deficit is about $5 million per month, two-thirds of the budget funds are received thanks to foreign loans and grants, with three-quarters of spending on military needs. At the end of August, the Finance Ministry said that Ukraine's state debt exceeded $132 billion which increased by $4 billion in July.