Economy

Oleg Pendzin: “In economic terms, this year will be harder than the previous one”

БЛІЦ

The first quarter of 2024 was challenging for the domestic economy. According to Roksolana Pidlasa, Head of the Parliamentary Budget Committee, Ukraine lacked UAH 257.4 billion to cover budget expenditures in three months. Therefore, these funds had to be raised from external assistance from our partners. In a blitz interview with Kommersant Ukrainian , we asked economic expert Oleg Pendzin what these figures mean and whether this is normal for a country at war.

uAH 257.4 billion of expenditures for the quarter that had to be covered by external funds – is this a lot or a little in our circumstances?

In March alone, we received USD 9 billion from our partners, and in January-February there were practically no revenues – in February there was about a billion, and in January about USD 700-800 million. So, of course, all this was put on hold.

I think that in March the situation will improve, and the funds that the Ministry of Finance has received as a result of the sale of macro-financial assistance, the 9 billion that has come in, will to some extent compensate for those unspent expenses.

How did other countries overcome similar crises?

The problem is that no warring country raised social standards during the war. All the countries that were at war put their economies on a war footing. I mean the big countries, I’m not talking about the Balkan wars, the wars between Israel and Hamas, these are completely different conditions, different processes. We can only compare it with the Second World War, when conditions were completely different, and the level of restriction of social standards and the transfer of the economy to a war footing was much more severe.

Today, we can afford such things because we have strong support from our partners. If we did not have it, everything would be different and much worse than it is now.

What was the deficit last year and the year before?

In 2023, we received USD 43 billion of macro-financial assistance, this year we hope to receive USD 37 billion, but we will actually receive less. We use this macro-financial assistance to finance social expenditures, because everything we earn goes to the war, and this is not enough. In fact, we get weapons for free from our partners, especially the Americans. Why do we still need this 60 billion in aid – it is mainly military and technical assistance. So these things are not comparable. We live in different conditions every year, and the amounts of aid are different. But this year will definitely be harder than 2023.

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