Ukraine's budget losses over Donbas reached 2 bln hryvni in Sept - Yatsenyuk
KYIV. Oct 1 (Interfax) - The decline in planned tax revenues in Luhansk and Donetsk regions in September reached 2 billion hryvni, and in the coming months the situation will get even worse, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said.
"We have again fallen short of 2 billion hryvni from Donbas. There is a steady trend of a decline in tax payments," he said, opening a Cabinet meeting in Kyiv on Wednesday.
The prime minister said that the trend has a time lag.
"If this month we actually collected revenues for August, in a month we expect the deterioration of the volume of tax collection in Donetsk and Luhansk regions," he said.
He added that the armed confrontation in Donetsk and Luhansk regions has a negative impact on the general state of the Ukrainian economy. He said that Ukrzaliznytsia is collecting only 40% of its target revenues in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
"Bridges have been blown up, roads have been blown up. There are no receipts from shipments, therefore there are no payments to the budget. This means that there are no wages or payments for electricity, and that simply kills the Ukrainian economy," he said, adding that the government is keeping the budget situation manageable.
Earlier reports said that thanks to hikes in taxes in dues that exceeded the drop in revenues from Donbas, in August general budget revenues grew 14% compared to July to 27.72 billion hryvni while expenditures contracted by 9.1% to 26.81 billion hryvni. There are no figures for September yet.
