Yesterday, the parliamentary Committee on Science and Education considered a new edition of the Budget Code, authored by representatives of Our Ukraine Valeriy Asadchev, Yuriy Kostenko and Petro Poroshenko. This draft was registered in the Verkhovna Rada on July 2, 2003. It regulates legal relations concerning the budget that are not regulated or contain contradictory norms in the current code. In particular, relations between the state and local budgets are significantly simplified, instruments for managing debt obligations are defined, and liability for offenses that cause losses to the budget is specified. In the new Budget Code, great attention is paid to issues of control over the use of budget funds, and the draft law provides for preliminary control, which makes their misappropriation or ineffective use impossible. A specific feature of the draft law is also the presence of instruments that would provide real independence to local budgets, stimulate their filling, and thus contribute to the development of local self-government in Ukraine. In addition, the proposal contained in the draft law regarding the introduction of a different system for calculating grants to local budgets, according to the authors, will allow reducing the gap that currently exists in the wages of workers in production and the humanitarian sphere. Until yesterday, the new edition of the Budget Code was considered by the Verkhovna Rada committees on social policy and labor, legislative support for law enforcement, national security and defense, combating organized crime, and the committee on foreign affairs, which approved this draft law. It is proposed to support the draft in the first reading or adopt it as a basis taking into account the proposals of committee members. Positive reviews of the draft law were also received from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, experts of the Association of Cities of Ukraine, the Accounting Chamber, and the Control and Audit Office. Foreign experts also responded favorably to the draft: representatives of the Committee on the Use of Budget Funds of Great Britain, the Supreme Financial Control Bodies of Sweden, France and Estonia, the Federal Audit Chamber of Germany, and World Bank experts