20.09.2002 00:22
EXPENSE NO OBJECT |OR DEFENSE OF UKRAINE FOR $8.2

Slightly more than eight dollars. This is a price each citizen of Ukraine would pay for defense of his (or her) own state in 2003, should the budget plan for the next fiscal year be approved as it is. This is an order of sum smaller than in NATO countries or the countries who, like Ukraine, seek membership in that military-political alliance. In 2003 Ukraine may obtain the smallest defense budget since 1997, despite all the pledges by the Supreme Commander and the National Security and Defense Council warnings that further keeping the military in critically short supply would be pointless, if not dangerous...

Defense Ministry officials claim the government wants the nation s defense spending to be cut to 1.3 percent of GDP projected for 2003.

In 1997 and 1998 Ukraine spent on defense 1.35 percent of GDP, in 1999 and 2001 1.4 percent, in 2000 1.45 percent, and in 2002 1.36 percent of GDP.

Originally, the budget plan for 2003 proposed by the Finance Ministry provided Hr 2555 million for defense needs, Hr 66 million down on this year. After heated disputes the figure has been raised to Hr 2945 million. Military officials claim that in calculating the nation s defense expenditures for 2003 the Finance Ministry conspicuously ignored Cabinet resolution No 507 issued on this Apr 11, setting the 2003 limit of budgeted defense funding at Hr 3.6 billion; as well as the July 26 s resolution by the National Security and Defense Council concerning the funding of the military in 2003, which was later promulgated in a decree by President Leonid Kuchma.

Minus the Hr 600 thousand the Defense Ministry has accumulated in debts to creditors, in 2003 the Ukrainian armed forces will obtain Hr 2345 million ($442 million). But the thing is that the Ukrainian military has never obtained from the budget what it was entitled to. That said, the actual sum will hardly exceed $400-410 million. By military expert estimates, that sum will only be enough to pay salaries to personnel, whereas military reform events, combat training programs, maintenance of armaments and military equipment, procurement programs and military research and development works are intended to be financed from the so-called special fund , i.e. with revenues from the sale of obsolete or redundant equipment, facilities and armaments. Originally, army was offered to earn on its own Hr 609.15 million for the fund (a quarter of the budgeted amount). But final version of the 2003 budget plan drafted by the Finance Ministry and approved by Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh sets the figure at Hr 987.2 million.

The Finance Ministry seems to believe that this would not be a big deal for the army, who earned for its own needs more than one billion hryvnias last year. But not so this year, however. In 2002, the military only managed to earn one third of the Hr 737 million it was supposed to. As far as funding for military procurement programs is concerned, the money will only come if target figures for privatization of state property are overshot (which has never happened yet, though).

Proper social provision for army servicemen is under threat as well. Despite government s failure to provide the necessary funding for the state program for the construction of homes for families of military officers, which has already taken on chronic proportions, article 48 in the 2003 budget plan provides that appropriations for home-building programs for military servicemen should not exceed Hr 400 million, which only accounts for about fifty percent of this year s figure.

By military expert estimates, in 2003 the Ukrainian armed forces will need funding in the amount of Hr 5.8 billion at the minimum, i.e. two-fold as much as what the budget plan earmarks. It s needless to say that if the state is not in a position to meet even the minimum needs of its own army the nation s defense system will hardly be able to effectively perform the tasks assigned to it, and its research, production and operational potentials will be brought to naught.

Defense Express note: Average per capita defense expenditures amount to $1240 in the USA, $649 in France, $380 in Germany, $158 in Turkey, $90 in Poland, $88 in Hungary, $40 in Russia.

(Ruslan Tkachuk, special to Defense Express)