You're reading: Presidential administration: State budget has funds for Yanukovych’s social initiatives

Ukraine's state budget has the necessary funds to implement new social initiatives proposed by President Viktor Yanukovych, his administration has reported.

"According to rough estimates by the Finance Ministry, there’s already an additional Hr 10-11 billion that has come primarily from higher than expected VAT revenues from imported and domestic products and due to a planned increase in revenues from income tax," the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Iryna Akimova, said at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday.

She said that additional sources of revenues to the state budget could be revenues after the adoption of a law on luxury tax (up to Hr 500 million), as well as the endorsement of a law on the liberalization of the mining market (revenues are expected at Hr 5-5.5 billion).

As reported, at an enlarged meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers on Wednesday dedicated to the government’s new social initiatives, Yanukovych instructed the government to increase by at least Hr 100 the pensions of nine million retirees who retired before 2008, ensure the payment in June through December 2012 of up to Hr 1,000 to each of the six million depositors of the former Soviet Sberbank as compensation for depreciated deposits, conduct from April 2012 a re-calculation of insurance benefits to people who became disabled as a result of industrial accidents, take steps to intensify the affordable housing program, introduce a European approach to the regulation of prices for medicines, and take a number of other measures.

Yanukovych also said that people in Ukraine would be able to raise loans under the state program for the purchase of housing at an interest rate of 2-3% per annum in the hryvnia for a period of 10-15 years, starting from May 2012.

"The state home loan mortgage program will start working from May. The cost of loans for people will amount to no more than 2-3%. The state will compensate the rest to banks. The terms of these loans will be designed for 10-15 years," he said.