Hryvnia strengthening reduced public debt by over UAH 100 bln - Accounting Chamber

He said this at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada committee on budget, the chamber's press service reported.

"The strengthening of the hryvnia has two sides of the coin. The positive thing is that over the past eight months of this year, the total amount of public and publicly guaranteed debt has decreased by UAH 101.3 billion. The strengthening of the hryvnia resulted in a decrease of debt by UAH 144.3 billion, with borrowing exceeding debt by UAH 43 billion," Patskan said.

At the same time, he added, the Accounting Chamber has repeatedly emphasized the need to improve the quality of projected macroeconomic figures that are are the basis for calculating the parameters of the state budget. According to him, Ukraine's state budget for 2019 projects the exchange rate, which is significantly different from the current one. According to Patskan, this has led to a significant non-receipt of revenues.

"Unfortunately, we have to state that over the past nine months of this year, according to the Accounting Chamber, the strengthening of the hryvnia has led to the non-receipt of UAH 20.7 billion in revenues from the state budget. And this is not surprising. After all, 40% of state budget revenues are calculated using the exchange rate of the hryvnia to the U.S. dollar or the euro," he said.

Patskan also noted that the draft state budget for 2020 sets the average exchange rate of the hryvnia to the U.S. dollar and the euro at the forecast level for this year – UAH 28.2 per U.S. dollar and UAH 31.9 per euro respectively. "But these figures are very different than those we see today. Therefore, I believe they have to be reviewed. Otherwise, I don't rule out that we will face problems again," he said.

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