On 4 October, in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, a group of the Parliament members registered the draft Law of Ukraine "On making amendments to the Budget Code of Ukraine (concerning the transfer of the excise tax from produced in Ukraine fuel and of part of the excise tax on imported to the customs territory of Ukraine fuel to the local budgets in 2020 (No. 2231)” that was developed by the Association of Ukrainian Cities.

According to this draft law, a part of the excise tax on fuel will be credited to the local budgets in 2020.

If this draft law is not adopted, the AUC estimates that hromadas will lose from UAH 7.7 billion annually from 2020, which will significantly weaken them. First and foremost, small cities and AHs will be affected a lot. Loss of capacity for hromadas means a complete rollback of decentralisation, the AUC believes.

The Association of Ukrainian Cities urged the authorities of local governments to appeal to the members of the Ukrainian Parliament and local deputies, as well as to the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine concerning support of the draft law No. 2231.

It is worth mentioning that within the framework of budget decentralisation, a few years ago, the excise tax on fuel was credited to the budgets of the hromadas. Local excise tax on fuel is not only a tool of struggle with shadowing in the field of fuel realisation (which was 30 % before its implementation, but also a source of hromadas revenues to implement social projects, such as construction of new schools and kindergartens, repair of roads, bridges, improvement of streets, etc. This resource is very important for local governments, as the excise tax on fuel brings to 50% of revenues in local budgets of some hromadas.

But the current Budget Code of Ukraine stipulates that from 2020 the excise tax on fuel will not be credited to budgets of hromadas.