Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The government plans to resubmit the bill on Monday after a failed vote last week.
The Verkhovna Rada will next week again try to vote on bill No. 15460 on taxation of parcels from abroad. Its passage is a critical condition for continued support of Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund. This was reported by the Reuters news agency citing the head of the Rada’s financial committee, Danylo Hetmantsev.
The new vote will serve as a kind of test of the parliament’s ability to carry out the reforms required by international partners. Ukraine is entering the fifth year of the full-scale war with Russia amid a severe budget deficit. This year it exceeds 32 billion dollars.
To cover budget needs, Ukraine must accelerate the reforms demanded by its main creditors, including the IMF. The funds obtained are needed to support the economy and finance social payments during the war. At the same time, it is precisely the parcel bill that has provoked significant disputes in parliament.
The bill envisages introducing value-added tax on parcels from abroad worth less than 150 euros, or roughly 175 dollars. Last week deputies again failed to approve it in the first reading.
The chairman of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax and customs policy, Danylo Hetmantsev, said the government plans to resubmit the bill to the Verkhovna Rada on Monday. According to him, the repeated consideration is expected already next week.
Last week an IMF mission was in Kyiv conducting scheduled negotiations on a program review. Deputies called these consultations difficult. During the talks, the Ukrainian side was made to understand that no exceptions should be expected regarding the adoption of this bill.
Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, during a meeting with deputies on Monday, stressed the need to adopt critically important bills. He said that decisions on which international assistance to Ukraine and the stability of the state budget depend cannot wait. Similar appeals have previously been made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
For more than a year, Ukraine has been facing difficulties in passing the reforms needed to receive funds from international partners. Some deputies explain their opposition by saying that the government and the president, in their view, resort to populism, do not pay sufficient attention to priority issues and submit poorly prepared bills.
Recall that the IMF’s demand to tax international parcels has already been postponed by Ukraine due to a lack of votes in the Verkhovna Rada. In June the Fund agreed to postpone adoption of the law that cancels the duty-free allowance for shipments worth up to 150 euros until the end of July. That then allowed unlinking receipt of the next tranche of 686 million dollars from the results of the parliamentary vote. The IMF also did not object to plans to raise the corporate income tax for banks to 50%, although its analysts considered such a step risky for lending to the economy.
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