President Victor Yushchenko held an extraordinary meeting with regional governors. The meeting was dedicated to issues in budgetary policy for this and next year, arrears of wages and critical state of national target programs implementation.
Opening the meeting President Yushchenko said that “it is bad news to live without the approved budget” for the next year. According to him the situation when the Government refuses draft budget, prepared by Ministry of Finance, demanding continuation of populist budgetary policy, was dangerous and would harm local budgets.
President Yushchenko also pointed to problems in this year’s budgetary policy, saying that the Government was unable to cover budgetary deficit even with incomes coming out of inflation.
He also pointed to aggravation of financial problems in the regions with growing number of local budgets that did not fulfill monthly income plans. Beside that, according to President, income taxes collections, which are primary source of funds for local budgets, were falling rapidly lately.
Therefore President Yushchenko urged every regional governor to elaborate an anti-crisis plan for his region and invite local businessmen to the process.
He also called upon regional governors to quicker turn to saving budgetary funds. As an example here President suggested reduction of staffing of local state authorities as recommended by the Cabinet.
President suggested holding another consultative meeting later to discussed regional anti-crisis programs that regional governors are to elaborate.
