The real subsistence minimum is approximately 9 thousand hryvnias, — Pidlasa

The real subsistence minimum is approximately 9 thousand hryvnias, — Pidlasa

Social standards in the 2025 budget draft remain unchanged because their increase requires significant limited resources. For example, raising the minimum wage by 100 UAH – to 8100 UAH, would cost the 2025 budget 5.3 billion UAH, said the head of the budget committee Roksolana Pidlasa in an interview with "Interfax-Ukraine" agency.

"According to calculations by the Ministry of Finance, if this year the minimum wage is increased by 100 UAH, the state budget expenditures will increase by 5.3 billion UAH. That is, if the minimum wage is increased, for example, by 1000 UAH - to 9000 UAH, this will lead to budget expenditures of more than 50 billion UAH," she emphasized.

Talking about the level of the subsistence minimum, Pidlasa noted that it is impossible to bring it to a real indicator because many payments are linked to it. In her opinion, when calculating the budget, it is worth abandoning the category of "subsistence minimum" altogether.

"This causes a lot of negative reactions to the state when we, supposedly in official documents, in the state budget, assert that a person should be able to live on 3000 UAH, meanwhile, the Ministry of Social Policy on the next street calculates the actual, real subsistence minimum at about 9000 UAH," explained the head of the budget committee of the Rada.

She believes that it is necessary to establish some basic calculation figure to which judges, prosecutors, anti-corruption agencies, and so on, will be linked.

The head of the VR committee added that the need to revise social standards would arise if the set GDP forecast for the first half of the next year is exceeded. "At present, the real GDP growth forecast for 2025 is 2.7%. If by the first half of the year we revise the macro forecast and see that it exceeds 2.7%, then it will be necessary to revise social standards," she noted.

In general, Pidlasa stated that the social sphere is the only category of budget expenditures where effective optimization can be carried out, particularly due to its capacity. "Unfortunately, for me, and probably for many people, the budget is balanced at the expense of social expenditures, because without this it is impossible to achieve balance. The next expenditure categories are education and healthcare, and each of these budgets is half the size of the one allocated for social needs, so it is difficult to optimize anything effectively there," she explained.

The head of the committee noted that the Ministry of Social Policy is constantly working on verifying recipients of social benefits and increasing their targeting, adding that as a result of using these funds, savings are generated, providing an opportunity to reduce expenditures. Pidlasa clarified that the reduction of the Ministry of Social Policy’s programs will not affect the recipients of assistance in any way: they will continue to receive it.

"The main burden of the reduction was borne by the Pension Fund: we reduced its expenditures for 2025 by 34 billion UAH. There are several reasons for this. I am not sure that this will remain in the final version of the budget, as this is, of course, a point of tension," she emphasized.

As reported, the government in the 2025 state budget draft provides 420.683 billion UAH for financing the Ministry of Social Policy, while this year’s budget allocated 469.73 billion UAH.

Previously, the head of the relevant committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, criticized the 2025 state budget draft, in particular for the decision to leave the subsistence minimum and minimum wage at the 2024 level, considering the expected acceleration of inflation and the weakening of the national currency.