Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk deems it necessary to offer local authorities a formula regarding main budget expenditure of the corresponding levels that must be aimed at social and humanitarian needs of the community. The whole financial reporting of the local budgets has to be public. The Head of Government stated this at a board meeting of the Finance Ministry on Monday, 27 July.

He stressed the need under the leadership of Finance Minister Natalia Jaresko "to immediately gather all regional financial services and clearly offer them main expenditure items that should finance the local budget when making changes to the budgets of the corresponding levels."

The PM calls on to prohibit any non-core expenses that are spent not on a person but on bureaucrats or corrupt tender.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed that local authorities must be offered a formula: "what they can spend on a hospital, kindergarten, school and what on extra charge - not staff but professional employees, teachers and hospital workers."

The Prime Minister also urged to publish all the data, "on what and how much was allocated from local budgets": "We publish all the data on the financial statements of the central budget. Local budgets are bound to make the same thing."

"Decentralization implies both obtaining rights that they have already received and responsibility. Every person in the country should know on what UAH12 billion of extra budgetary resource allocated by the central government is being spent," he added.

Moreover, he pointed out the need to "leave reserve in local budgets", "We should always be conservative in our estimates, that’s why it means that even local budgets should have reserve funds."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called unacceptable the situation when local authorities refuse to get income from profitable businesses and the transfer of these revenues on social, medical and educational needs of the community: "Kyiv doesn’t tax commercial property any more. Commercial real estate - this is where people make money. They have crossed a line. And here we must talk to the relevant local authorities."

"This means that such a local authority deprives its citizens of the opportunity to develop the system of education, medicine, make additional payments to a teacher or doctor or police officer, repair a road or buy new equipment in the health post or hospital. It is unfair toward people," he underlined.

The Prime Minister appealed to the Ministry of Finance to release information about "those local authorities that refused to make a decision in favor of local communities regarding additional increase in local revenues and allocation of these funds on solving social, economic and humanitarian issues of the relevant territory."