Today a press conference was held in Lutsk by People's Deputies of Ukraine from the Volyn region, members of the budget committee of the Verkhovna Rada Borys Zahreva (faction "Our Ukraine") and Yevhen KyryLchuk (B&YuT), regarding the adoption of the law "On the Budget of Ukraine 2004". \n \nAs Yevhen KyryLchuk noted, to be objective, in numerical terms the indicators of the revenue part of the budget did indeed grow from 55 billion hryvnias in 2003 to 60 billion in 2004. However, in percentage terms these indicators are underestimated, believes Yevhen Ivanovych. Thus, this year the revenue part amounted to about 30 percent of GDP, and taking into account the growth of Ukraine's GDP in 2003 and the Cabinet of Ministers' forecast of its growth in 2004 by 8 percent, these same 30 percent of GDP should amount to 84 billion hryvnias. That is, in the 2004 budget about 24 billion hryvnias are hidden, which are accumulated to support the government's candidate in the presidential elections, believes the People's Deputy. \n \n"Last year the budget committee of the Verkhovna Rada worked on a purely professional basis, regardless of the political affiliation of its members. When the committee wanted to increase the revenue part of the 2004 budget by 7 billion hryvnias, the Presidential Administration set the task not to go for such an increase. After that, the politicization of the budget committee began," says People's Deputy Borys Zahreva. \n \nAlso, according to the People's Deputies, the 2004 budget will contain serious negatives in the social sphere, especially considering the projected higher inflation rate next year (6.9%) compared to this year's (4.6%). \n \nThus, the introduction of VAT on medical preparations and the mechanism of approval by the Cabinet of Ministers of the abolition of VAT on the group of essential medicines means lobbying by certain pharmaceutical enterprises controlled by oligarchs of their interests and the possibility of including non-essential medicines in this list, believes Borys Zahreva. Such a development of events will painfully hit socially unprotected segments of the population, in particular pensioners. \n \nAlso, according to Borys Yefymovych, the restoration of taxation of villages under old schemes, the introduction of a mechanism for non-refund of VAT upon export of agricultural products and, accordingly, the inclusion of these funds in its cost price, is a deliberate weakening of the economic potential of the village. After all, according to Borys Zahreva, the Government is preparing for the sale of land in 2005, therefore it is deliberately undermining its economic potential to reduce the cost of land. \n \nSeparate attention during the press conference was focused by the deputies on the complexity of implementing local budgets. After all, according to a study developed by the Association of Cities of Ukraine together with the Association of Financiers of Ukraine, the deficit of local budgets for equalization grants under existing conditions will amount to 23 to 28 percent. In the second reading of the budget adoption, it was taken into account to add 1.8 billion hryvnias, but for the normal implementation of local budgets about 1 billion hryvnias more is needed, believes Yevhen KyryLchuk. \n \nAt the press conference it was noted that according to the Budget Code the budget must be deficit-free, but this year state budget expenditures will exceed the revenue part by as much as 4 billion hryvnias. Also the deputies expressed their disagreement with the refusal to raise the price of coal and subsoil use for the metallurgical industry, accused the Cabinet of Ministers and, in particular, First Vice-Premier Mykola Azarov of double standards, the Presidential Administration of bribing majority deputies (according to unofficial data reported by Mr. Zahreva, majority deputies were "handed" 3.5 million hryvnias each for supporting the 2004 budget), and the Agrarian faction and its leader Kateryna Vashchuk of being unaware of the substance of the bills being voted on. \n \n"I thought that Azarov was a professional, a financial-budgetary professional. Now I am firmly convinced that he is merely a geologist. And he will never become one [a professional]," expressed his opinion Yevhen KyryLchuk.