Rada supports draft state budget for 2026 with deficit of about UAH 2.4 trillion
The Verkhovna Rada has approved the draft State Budget of Ukraine for 2026.
This was reported by Censor.NET.
Voting results
In the second reading, 261 MPs voted in favour of the bill.
In the overall vote, 257 MPs supported it.
Details
Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko said before the vote that total budget expenditures would amount to 4.781 trillion hryvnias.
By the second reading, an additional 19 billion hryvnias had been allocated to the reserve fund. The draft also provides for a phased increase in teachers’ salaries, the implementation of state housing programmes and other measures.
Marchenko added that the ceiling on the state budget deficit had been increased by almost 6 billion hryvnias, to 1.9 trillion hryvnias.
The budget deficit stands at 18.5% of GDP.
Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee Roksolana Pidlasa had earlier called on MPs to support the decision, namely to:
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increase the share of personal income tax (PIT) going to local budgets by 4 percentage points, to 64 percent, and earmark these additional funds for payments for energy resources and for repaying arrears arising from tariff differences on energy (where such arrears exist);
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accordingly, remove the subsidy for tariff differences, which had been set at 15.2 billion hryvnias, in order to offset the reduction in state budget revenues;
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add 1 billion hryvnias for the Defence Ministry’s procurement of weapons and military equipment, to be financed by reallocating funds from the "military reserve" programme;
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allocate an additional 244 million hryvnias to the Bureau of Economic Security, taking the funds from the reserve fund.
"The increase in teachers’ salaries remains in place: from 1 January they will rise by 30 percent, and from 1 September by a further 20 percent, without any changes to the current approach to teachers’ pay. At the same time, it is proposed to allocate an additional 4.8 billion hryvnias to the programme aimed at enhancing the prestige of teaching, so that we have the opportunity to consider further salary increases for teachers during the year," she noted.
Budget-2026
As reported earlier, the Verkhovna Rada was supposed to adopt the law "On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2026" by 20 November. However, the vote was postponed for at least two weeks, until early December.
Among the reasons, MPs cite a lack of support in the chamber due to the crisis triggered by the scandal over the alleged involvement of people close to the president in corruption at Energoatom, as well as outstanding disagreements with the government over certain provisions of the budget.
At the same time, passage of the 2026 state budget is one of the prior actions for a new four-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme with the IMF totalling about 8.1 billion US dollars.
As a reminder, on 5 November, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the draft state budget for 2026 for the second reading, taking into account the parliament’s proposals. At the same time, Yaroslav Zhelezniak, First Deputy Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Tax and Customs Policy (Holos party), noted that a number of MPs’ proposals had not been taken into account.
