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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Tax and Customs Policy, People’s Deputy from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Nina Yuzhanina, forgot that she asked colleagues to reject limits on “one‑hand” subsidies for agricultural holdings.
This is stated in Valeriya Ivanova’s report for the program “Game of Words.”
“It seems to me we left the amendment on the limitation at 150 million per agricultural producer, ” Nina Yuzhanina told the program’s correspondent. “I thought these limits were in place. Well, that was the main thing.”
In fact, the limits were removed this year at Ms. Yuzhanina’s request. Before the vote on this year’s budget at the meeting of the Tax and Customs Policy Committee, which she chairs, on 19 December 2016, People’s Deputy of the People’s Front Oleg Kryshyn proposed capping the amount of subsidies to agricultural producers at 150 million hryvnias for a single enterprise. Deputies supported that proposal.
However, the next day the committee chair Nina Yuzhanina asked colleagues to return to the amendment and reject it. In addition to those present at the committee, this is confirmed by the committee meeting transcript from 20 December 2016.
“If we limit them now, they will do everything so that they won’t pay (the subsidy is tied to VAT paid by companies – ed.), so the limit will play no role,” the presiding officer’s words in the transcript—i.e., Nina Yuzhanina—state. “So, I ask to return to 125 the amendment. Please, author Kryshyn, state it yourself so we can move forward.”
As a result, the limit was abolished.
After Nina Yuzhanina’s interview for the program “Game of Words,” in which the journalist reminded her about the transcript, the Tax and Customs Policy Committee’s website removed the transcripts of meetings for 19–20 December. However, the program’s journalists retained screenshots.
The one‑hand limit on agricultural subsidies was supposed to take effect from 2018. But it is already being actively circumvented. A whole group of lawmakers is working on this. Among them is Mykola Kucher, a former employee of Myronivsky Hliboproduct of Yuriy Kosiuk. And Oleksandr Bakumenko, former head of the Poultry Farmers’ Union, which is financed, among others, by Kosiuk’s holding. Deputies have already submitted an amendment that removes this limitation in the draft budget‑2018.
“People have already forgotten that eggs were once in short supply, and that we used to eat only frozen chicken legs, and now 40 types of products. I want it to stay that way and continue to develop,” Oleksandr Bakumenko, People’s Deputy from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, explained to the television program “Game of Words.”
Because there are no limits on receiving budget subsidies, Yuriy Kosiuk’s MHP holding has already received almost 1 billion hryvnias from the budget in less than 2017 year. From July to September 2014, Kosiuk served as first deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Petro Poroshenko and is one of six Ukrainians listed among the world’s billionaires by Forbes.
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