Zaporizhia – First deputy head of the presidential secretariat, Oleksandr Shlapak, has forecasted the worsening of the economic situation in the country by late 2009 due to unreliable calculations in the national budget for 2009.
“All of the attempts of the president to call on the cabinet to revise the macro-structures on which the budget is based were in vain,” he said at a press conference in Zaporizhia on Tuesday.
Shlapak said that the GDP fall since the start of the year was around 20%, which is not in line with the projected growth foreseen in the budget, on which the revenues target of the budget is built. The result was delays with the payment of wages, pensions, and the non-payment of subventions and allocations to local budgets, he said.
“The cabinet refuses to revise the budget. Absolutely every resource you can think of is being used to fulfill the budget,” he said.
He took the payment of taxes as an example.
“By October 1, 2008, taxes kept up to the UAH 3-4 billion level. From October 1, 2008 we have the following trend: extra taxes of around UAH 11 billion against UAH 4 billion, which could [only] be tolerated during a normal economic situation. This means that around UAH 7 billion in extra taxes were taken from our companies,” he said.
Shlapak also said that VAT non-reimbursement has jumped. He said that as of January 2008 the debt for VAT reimbursement totaled around UAH 8 billion, and now it has grown to UAH 20 billion.
He also criticized the cabinet’s promises to increase wages to budget organizations in 2010 and drew attention to problems with the implementation of the budget and provision of commitments.
