Support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, education, medicine and social protection, critical infrastructure and a reserve fund (liquidation of the consequences of missile strikes) are the main directions to which budget funds of the Lviv community are planned to be directed in 2024. The day before, the Lviv City Council held a public discussion of the draft budget of the Lviv community for 2024 with the city community and deputies. During the next 10 days, all interested parties can submit their budget proposals to the e-mail address.
As the first deputy mayor of Lviv, Andriy Moskalenko, noted, it is about the general budget of the Lviv community, which does not consider capital expenditures.
“Yesterday, the main indicators were presented to the public. Today, the first draft (initial version of the project) of the budget was approved at a meeting of the executive committee, so that it can be considered by deputy commissions from Monday.
The size of the budget for 2024 will be about 13 billion hryvnias. We have a consolidated position of the mayor of Lviv and all heads of factions regarding priority. Next year, expenditures for the support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the amount of one billion hryvnias will be maintained, just as it was this year. And this despite the fact that the military personal income tax will be removed from the city budget, supporting the military remains our priority.
4 other directions: support of critical infrastructure, medicine, that is, rehabilitation and social policy, as well as education and support of the reserve fund – liquidation of the consequences of missile attacks.
For many programs in the draft budget, expenditures are either reduced, or we are forced to abandon them altogether. Many of them are important, but we have a clear priority. If it is possible not to spend money on this now, then we will instead direct them to the needs of the Armed Forces, this is how this budget project was formed,” Andriy Moskalenko said.
The 2024 budget will be smaller than this year’s. Therefore, a number of expenses had to be limited, because it is primarily about the military budget.
Support of the Armed Forces – UAH 1 billion
Education – UAH 4,704.9 billion
Medicine, social protection – UAH 851.4 million
Critical infrastructure – UAH 873.8 million
Reserve fund (elimination of the consequences of enemy attacks) – UAH 350 million
“Education remains the largest item of expenditure. In fact, expenses in all sectors are growing, mainly due to the fact that wages are rising and the cost of energy carriers is rising. Medicine and social protection are also a priority. Support of heat supply enterprises remains a significant problem for all local self-government bodies. Our direction of critical infrastructure – UAH 873.8 million – is only support for heat supply enterprises. The real need, according to the department’s proposal, was 1 billion 200 million. So far, we have predicted such a figure only so that heat tariffs do not rise. We have to reimburse it from the budget.
During the discussion, part of the expenses had to be reduced, we have to balance, while there remains an increase in expenses in each of the areas.
Let me remind you that the personal income tax of the military units was taken away from us, and for Lviv this means a minus of UAH 1.8 billion,” said Viktoriya Dovzhik, director of the financial policy department of the Lviv City Council.
In general, the draft budget for 2024 reduced spending on education, health care, social protection, culture and art, housing and communal services, transport and transport infrastructure, other measures and programs. And the implementation of individual programs had to be abandoned. Among them, in particular, a depression watering can, the program “Let’s make Lviv better”, “Medical Contact Center”, the program of financial support of the CNP “Lviv Clinical Territorial Medical Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology”.
During 10 days, the public of the city can write their proposals on the city budget to the e-mail address dfpp.lviv@gmail.com.
The draft budget can be viewed at the link.
From Monday, the draft budget for 2024 will be considered by all specialized commissions, it will be submitted for consideration by the budget commission, the consolidated version will be approved by the executive committee of the Lviv City Council, and then it will be submitted for consideration by the session of the Lviv City Council.