The Verkhovna Rada will not consider amendments to the State Budget-2025 for UAH 400 billion: there is a new proposal for army financing

The Verkhovna Rada will not be able to consider bill No. 13439-3 on budget amendments today. Instead, a new draft law No. 13573 on amendments to the 2025 budget has been registered, which includes only an increase in defense sector expenditures. This was reported on Facebook by Roksolana Pidlasa, head of the budget committee, according to UNN.

Details

Yesterday, during political consultations, the Rada decided that budget amendments (bill No. 13439-3) cannot be considered in the hall today.

She noted that at the same time, there remains a critical problem of paying monetary allowances to servicemen in August.

Accordingly, this morning, Ruslan Stefanchuk, Oleksandr Korniienko, Olena Kondratiuk, and I, along with the heads of factions, registered a new draft law No. 13573 on amendments to the 2025 Budget, which includes only an increase in defense sector expenditures.

The MP noted that it is proposed to increase defense sector expenditures by UAH 412.3 billion, of which UAH 115 billion is for monetary allowances for servicemen of all Defense Forces, and UAH 216 billion is for the procurement and production of weapons, military equipment, and drones. The rest is for other needs of the army.

According to her, in addition, the text of the bill contains an important textual norm, namely - a new distribution of personal income tax from August 1, 2025:

• 60% - directed to the Ministry of Defense for the purchase of drones, weapons, military equipment (this is an additional UAH 22.4 billion for the Ministry of Defense, already included in the total amount of the increase);

• 30% - State Special Communications Service for drones;
• 10% - for the needs of brigades.

Pidlasa also noted that balancing is done at the expense of the same sources that were previously defined in the government's bill (government bonds and overfulfillment of revenues), namely:

• UAH 184.9 billion - increased attraction of funds from government bonds;
• UAH 147.5 billion - overfulfillment and expected overfulfillment of the budget's own revenues (primarily, this refers to personal income tax, corporate income tax, excise tax on imported goods + the NBU and state-owned companies transferred more than expected);
• UAH 65.1 billion - reduction of expenses for repayment of government bonds;
• UAH 11.2 billion - reduction of debt servicing expenses (interest for using borrowed funds) - due to exchange rates and restructurings.

We plan to consider this project in the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Budget and in the session hall, I ask my colleagues to support it as a whole to ensure timely payments of monetary allowances to servicemen.

Addition

Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading bill No. 13439-3, which, in particular, provides for an increase in security and defense expenditures by UAH 412.4 billion.