Budget 2023 will be very difficult – Ministry of Finance

All expenses for the following year will be reviewed. The minister hopes that all expenses will be covered.

The 2023 budget will be very tight, finance minister Serhiy Marchenko warned in an interview with RBC-Ukraine published on Monday, August 15.

The main task, like this year, is to find additional funds to fill the budget shortfall.

“The budget will be very tight. This is a budget of opportunities in a war. But at the same time, there is hope that we will be able to finance it. The key task is to find funds, including with the help of our partner countries, to finance the budget deficit,” he said.

According to him, next year “no expense will not be reviewed.”

“In all areas, there will definitely be a review of all costs, optimization. On the one hand, our budget is very difficult, because it is a difficult year, complex macro indicators that are difficult to assess well, there are many unknowns. But on the other hand, it is quite simple. Because we need to fund pensions for pensioners, salaries for doctors, teachers, social protection of citizens, payments to internally displaced people and funds for the military campaign, for the army,” said Marchenko.

The minister also noted that the hryvnia exchange rate against the dollar, on which the budget is calculated, is not yet public, but “the numbers are not catastrophic.”

According to the Ministry of Finance, since the beginning of the war, state budget funding has amounted to 805.3 billion hryvnias, or $26.95 billion. External receipts amounted to $13.87 billion or 51% of the total fund.

The Ministry of Finance also announced a sharp reduction in the state budget deficit – in July it reached UAH 4.8 billion against UAH 134.9 billion in June. Since the beginning of the year, the deficit has reached UAH 412 billion.

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