Ukraine to continue looking for foreign sources to finance budget deficit - finance minister

MOSCOW. Aug 24 (Interfax) - Ukraine is continuing to look for guaranteed international sources to finance its 2024 state budget deficit, Ukrainian media quoted Finance Minister Sergei Marchenko as saying during a national TV marathon on Thursday.

Following the start of the crisis in 2022, the Finance Ministry was first looking for international financing for three months in the amount of about $5 billion a month, and one of the priorities for 2023 was to provide financing for a counteroffensive, Marchenko said.

The problem of the 2024 budget financing has not yet been settled, he said.

The security and defense sector's expenditures in 2024 will be no lower than in 2023, in which they exceeded UAH 1.6 trillion, Marchenko said. "This is more than the taxes that we collect," he said.

The military is asking five times more, but Ukraine cannot increase taxes that much, he said.

"The current budget of the security and defense sector is what we can afford, and we're making huge efforts to maintain this sector," Marchenko said, adding that only some slight adjustments are possible for the time being.

As reported, foreign financing of Ukraine's state budget in 2023 is to amount to $42.5 billion (compared to $32.1 billion in 2023), of which $29.7 billion has already been disbursed.

Marchenko said earlier that foreign financing in 2024 should be roughly the same as in 2023.