The Association of Cities of Ukraine calls on the President to preserve the reverse subsidy for communities

Photo by UNIANVillage, settlement and city mayors appealed to the President of Ukraine to preserve the funds of the reverse subsidy in community budgets in 2025 in order to jointly protect the citizens of Ukraine from the rapid increase in tariffs or disruption of the heating season, blackouts and lack of critical medical care. This is stated in an official statement published by the Association of Cities of Ukraine on its website.

According to the Association, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in the draft Law of Ukraine “On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2025”, reg. No. 12000, initiated the withdrawal from the revenues of the community budgets of the funds of the reverse subsidy, which in the next budget year is planned in the amount of UAH 12.9 billion for 189 communities.

“The heads of large and small communities appealed to the President of Ukraine to preserve the reversion funds in local budgets. And this is right – to work together, strengthen each other, find common solutions. There is no reversion in Kyiv. There is no 64% of personal income tax in the Kyiv budget, only 40% . But I also join my colleagues and ask to leave the funds of the reversion, 64% and the single tax in the revenues of the communities”, – supported the statement of the mayors of the Association of Cities of Ukraine, Mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klychko.

The appeal emphasizes that the existing system of heat supply, without compensation for the difference in tariffs, with the withdrawal of 65% of the revenue of enterprises, with a moratorium on raising tariffs and in the presence of 64 billion UAH of debt to the state for services already provided, without maintaining a reverse subsidy in the budgets of communities, will stop heat supply under the time of the heating season will sharply raise tariffs.

“We must be ready to provide communities with autonomous energy supply, Unbreakable Points, special energy supply equipment for critical facilities, provide compensation for the difference in tariffs to heat and water supply companies so that the 2024/25 heating season passes without raising tariffs for the population, and for this the reverse subsidy should be preserved in the budgets of village, settlement and city councils,” the authors emphasize.

The Association notes that people’s deputies of Ukraine also systematically oppose this position of the Government. 68 people’s elected officials jointly appealed to the Deputy Prime Minister for Reconstruction Oleksiy Kuleba about saving the funds of the reversion in the budgets of communities.

The authors believe that the source for preserving UAH 12.9 billion of reverse subsidy in local budgets can be an additional subsidy for the exercise of the powers of local self-government bodies in the de-occupied, temporarily occupied and other territories of Ukraine that were negatively affected by the Russian Federation. With the planned figure for 2024 at the level of about 34 billion UAH, in Appendix 5 of the draft State Budget of Ukraine for 2025, expenditures are planned at the level of 51.2 billion UAH, which are not even distributed among communities.