Zelenskiy to Approve Ukraine's 2025 Budget with Tax Increases
(Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that he would sign Ukraine's 2025 budget the following day, a document calling for the country's first wartime tax increases.
Zelenskiy said he would sign the budget after parliament, which passed it last week, formally submitted it.
He had discussed its provisions, and Ukraine's financial preparedness, earlier in the day with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and members of the assembly.
"The main point is that all of Ukraine's financial needs for the near future and the next year are fully guaranteed," he said in his nightly video address.
Ukraine funds its defence efforts with tax revenues and increases are vital to boost spending to meet the growing need for weapons and ammunition as the war with Russia extends past the 33-month mark.
Russian forces have been making steady gains on eastern sectors of the 1,000-km (600 mile) front line as Kyiv's troops battle a larger and better equipped enemy.
Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko has said that Ukraine hopes tax increases will generate additional budget revenues of 141 billion hryvnias ($3.39 billion).
As parliament debated the budget last week, Shmyhal said record sums would be directed to weapons production and purchases, including modernising Ukraine's weapons industry and purchasing drones.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Alistair Bell)
