Marchenko said that it would not be possible to artificially increase expenses, because “they simply don’t exist.”
The Ministry of Finance is awaiting proposals from the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff to cover the costs of additional mobilization, because there is no money in the budget for this.
This was stated by the Minister of Finance of Ukraine Sergei Marchenko during the Forbes YouTube project “Business Breakfeast”.
“I would give the General Staff, together with the Ministry of Defense, the opportunity to find approaches to this issue and propose a solution to how they see the optimization of costs. Because we have exhausted our internal potential for financing military needs, and simply artificially, relatively speaking, increasing the amount will not work. , because they simply don’t exist,” says Marchenko.
According to him, the Ministry of Finance is awaiting information regarding the scale of mobilization and timing, as well as the necessary expenses.
Marchenko admitted that the funding volumes announced by President Zelensky (500 billion hryvnia in the case of conscription of half a million people) are correct.
The Minister explained that there are many factors influencing these calculations, in particular:
- terms of mobilization and demobilization;
- provision of units.
“If we need to find funds, then we need to understand in time – they need to be found today, or is it March-April-May, perhaps the second half of the year. That is, I need a picture, as a minister, then we can talk about providing these needs,” noted the head of the Ministry of Finance.
He added that it is the Ministry of Defense that considers the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, determines possible sources for optimizing existing needs and comes to a joint decision with the Ministry of Finance.
“We have not received such a need from the Ministry of Defense; we do not work directly with the General Staff,” concluded Marchenko.
Earlier, Sergei Marchenko said that he does not understand why the military at the front buy things with their own money.
