Although the year is not over yet, I can say that the budget 2016 has been successfully implemented. The State Fiscal Service of Ukraine set the record high of an additional $6 billion revenues contribution to the state budget.
In the SFS we managed to do it despite the economic difficulties in the country and thanks to the systemic reforms of the tax and customs services, which we were implementing during the year, including launch of large scale of electronic services. As an example, more than 40 electronic services, launched by SFS, caused significant improvement of document circulation: we process 50 electronic documents per second, –i.e., more than a million per day . We launched the updated “Electronic cabinet of taxpayer”, and now nearly 4.5 million people from more than 70 countries have already used it. Also Electronic administration of fuel sales was introduced and brought order in this area.
During the institutional reform SFS reduced 30% of employees and tax inspections units, launched Intra-regional customs, Dog Training Center of the World Customs Organization, Interdepartmental Targeting Center and Mobile Groups, Partnership Center will open its doors very soon. We are working to deepen cooperation with our partners to create joint border crossing points and accede to the European Customs Information System. The reform of Large Taxpayer Office is now at the stage of completion, soon the project “e-audit” will be launched.
Implementation and overfulfilment of budget revenues provides the ground for a gradual stabilization of the economy of the state. Overfulfillment of the revenues plan made it possible to begin the process of growth of minimum wages.
Regarding the raising of the minimum wages, my vision remains the same: today it is possible to provide growth of minimum wages to 5,000, and then to 7,500. Raising the minimum wage is a powerful tool for removing business from the shadows, struggling with salaries in envelopes, increasing revenues to budgets of all levels.
Overfulfillment of financial plans also allowed to raise the social standards and partially eliminate the national debt of past years to our employers.
In 2016, SFS was able to minimize the value added tax debt, and thus support business a lot.
As a result of reform, substantial improvement of our work, achieving constructive dialogue with business and growth of the SFS reputation in the community we managed to increase this year revenues to the state budget to more than Hr 154 billion, payments to the local budget – by Hr 41.9 billion comparing to last year . So, revenues as the state and local budgets increased significantly. And this is only for 11 months. We managed to do this.
Customs duties also increased by 32 percent. Planned figures for 11 months exceeded to Hr 14,2 billion. Within the ongoing customs reform the main task for us is to improve significantly the investment attractiveness of Ukraine.
We are constantly working to improve service quality, to expand digital circulation of documents and simplify the reporting. Today 44.1 million individuals, 1.9 million individual businessmen, 1,24 million legal entities and 3,14 million payers of Single Social Contribution are registered in the service. For all taxpayers we try to create comfortable conditions for their work. Our goal is to improve the service functions of SFS.
Budget 2017 is a new challenge, but this year we have created the foundation to face the next year confidently.
