President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko says that the draft national budget for 2018 envisages UAH 86 billion (US$3.2 billion) for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), which is almost 25% up from 2017, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
The draft national budget for 2018 introduced for the second reading in the Verkhovna Rada does not foresee the allocation of funds as direct subsidies to agrarian, designed to compensate their losses from the abolition of the special VAT regime, according to the draft law on the 2018 budget posted on the website of Ukraine's parliament.
Deputy Director of the Ukrainian Finance Ministry's budget planning department Mykhailo Bosak says indicators of the government-drafted national budget for 2018, which has passed its first reading in parliament, are in line with the benchmarks of the International Monetary Fund's Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine forecasts the exchange rate of the hryvnia at UAH 30.1 per U.S. dollar at the end of next year, according to an explanatory note to the draft state budget of Ukraine for 2018.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Monday, August 18, has released the draft budget for 2018, earlier approved by the Cabinet of Ministers and submitted for consideration by MPs, with a deficit laid down at UAH 77.9 billion.