New regime 25% more expensive than its predecessor
Despite initial plans by the new government to reduce spending on officialdom by 20%, this expenditure has, according to the weekly “Commentaries”, increased by 25%. The newspaper bases its assessment on an analysis of State and local budgets.
This year the spending for the upkeep of the State Department for Affairs [DUS] has increased by 28%, while the amount allocated for the President’s activities is 17% higher than a year ago. The upkeep of DUS (whose activities are as elusive as its name – translator] will cost the country more than a billion UAH. There is a 12% increase in spending on maintaining the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat, while the expenditure on maintaining the Office of the Verkhovna Rada has risen by 11%
Other increases for 2010:
Office of the State Property Fund – by 21%;
The Control and Audit Department – 20.2%;
The State Committee of Statistics – 5.6%
The newspaper points out that the largest increases in spending on management and administration have been received by those who made the loudest noises about the need to reduce the number of civil servants.
The budget for the State Committee on Business Enterprise under Mykhailo Brodsky increased by 48.5% as against 2009, despite promises from its head a month ago to get rid of all regional departments, and reduce numbers at its central office in order to save money.
The local authorities have also increased their spending on their own upkeep.
The Donetsk Regional Council has over 21 million UAH allocated for this year, as against 15.5 million in 2009.
The Poltava Regional Council – 7.35 million UAH against 5.15 million last year;
Spending on the Crimean parliament has almost doubled – to 64 million UHA.
Spending has also increased in the Odessa, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv and other regions.
There is a clear pattern: while on average the regional budgets have increased by 10-15%, spending on maintaining the regional councils has risen by 20-45% respectively. Thus regional and district administrations have allocated three times as much money on their own upkeep, as on other spending.