Ukrainian parliament passes 2024 state budget

Ukraine's parliament passed the 2024 state budget on Thursday, Azernews reports, citing Interfax.

"The 2024 state budget has been passed! The priorities are set down clearly in the budget," Ukrainian media quoted Prime Minister Denis Shmygal as saying on Telegram.

He said almost half of the budget spending would go on defense and security.

"The indexation of pensions, as well a higher minimum wage have been budgeted for. Education spending will increase by more than UAH 20 billion. Spending on health care will rise by more than UAH 20 billion. We are doubling funds for the veterans support program. We are providing more than UAH 40 billion to support business," he said.

The government in September approved the draft 2024 state budget with record expenditures and deficit.

The budget that the government introduced for its second reading with hardly any changes following discussion by the parliament's budget committee and parliament itself, projects revenue to rise 24.9% from 2023 to UAH 1.769 trillion in 2024, and expenditure to fall 2.5% to UAH 3.309 trillion. General Fund revenue should grow 27.3% to UAH 1.597 trillion and expenditure 0.4% to UAH 3.108 trillion.

Defense and security spending will be around UAH 1.69 trillion.

The Finance Ministry said earlier that the bill called for reducing the budget deficit to 20.4% of GDP in 2024 from 27% of GDP in 2023.

The state budget deficit is capped at UAH 1.572 trillion, including UAH 1.509 trillion for the General Fund. The public debt ceiling will be raised to UAH 7.46 trillion lion's share of the deficit, equivalent to $41 billion, should be covered with external financing.

The government, when approving the draft state budget for its second reading, lowered its 2024 GDP growth forecast from 5% to 4.6%, but improved the inflation forecast from 10.8% to 9.7%, and adjusted its estimate for the the assumption about the average exchange rate next year to UAH 40.7/$1 from UAH 41.4/$1.