It became known at whose expense the government will finance the National Cashback program
28 November 2024 11:14
The Ministry of Economy has been instructed by a government decree to reallocate state budget expenditures within the total amount for 2024. This decision was drawn to the attention of MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
According to the government document, it is proposed to reduce funding for such programs:
– Partial compensation for the cost of agricultural machinery – by UAH 99.83 million;
– State support for investment projects – by UAH 1.76 billion;
– Compensation for humanitarian land demining – by UAH 2 billion.
At the same time, these funds have been redistributed in favor of the program “Support for Domestic Demand for Domestic Goods and Services” (National Cashback), which will receive UAH 3.86 billion.
That is, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to take money from the program to support agricultural producers, business and mine action and send an additional UAH 3.8 billion this year for… cashback.
Perhaps the government was inspired to make this decision by entrepreneurs who are looking for and finding funds for equipment and business expansion. Or even demining farmland themselves. There are some of them, of course,
A Mykolaiv farmer cleared about 400 hectares of land by himself
Suspilne TV channel told us about Serhiy Kaushan, a private entrepreneur from the village of Kyselivka, Mykolaiv region, who has demined about 400 hectares of land in two years. He uses a metal detector to search for explosive objects.
“If everyone does as much work as I have done, Ukraine will be demined in a few years. I’m walking along, looking for something, and I hear it beeping – there’s some metal. I pushed it to the side and used a pitchfork to make sure nothing happened,” Kaushan says.
He notes that the first shell he carried in his hands was from a self-propelled artillery system. The heaviest field Serhiy Kaushan cleared contained up to a ton of explosives per hectare. On other landings, he usually finds three to five items.
Kaushan’s farm grows grain and industrial crops: wheat, barley, sunflower, and rapeseed.
Serhii’s fields still have more than 50 hectares of mined land, with anti-tank and plastic mines that the metal detector does not detect. According to the man, he is not the only farmer who is engaged in de-mining on his own.
What to do He does not have enough money for demining – he needs cashback.
And experts warned…
The implementation of the proposed mechanism to support domestic producers is financially burdensome for the state budget and quite difficult to administer. Such warnings were voiced at the stage of launching the National Cashback program.
In addition, the unfair cashback mechanism, which operates exclusively through retail chains, distorts competition in the retail market, where such chains already have a dominant market power.
The experts emphasized that state support for domestic producers should be implemented by “ensuring a favorable business and investment climate in the country, eliminating bureaucracy and corruption, protecting property rights, reforming the tax and law enforcement systems, ensuring rights and economic freedoms for domestic business in Ukraine.”
