Ukraine's Ministry of Finance comments on funds for additional mobilisation
The Ministry of Finance is waiting for proposals from the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff to cover the costs of additional mobilisation.
Source: Minister Serhii Marchenko, during the Business Breakfast, the Forbes’s YouTube project
"I would allow the General Staff, together with the Ministry of Defence, to find approaches to this issue and propose their own solutions to optimisation of expenditures… Because I have already pointed out several times that we have exhausted our internal potential to finance military needs, and increasing the amount [of money] artificially, so to say, will not work", Serhii Marchenko said.
According to Marchenko, the Ministry of Finance is waiting for information on the scale of mobilisation and timing and the necessary expenses.
The previously announced amount of funding - UAH 500 billion (approx. US$13 million), in case of conscription of up to 500,000 people – is correct, the minister believes.
However, he stressed that many factors affect these calculations, particularly the timing of mobilisation and demobilisation and the provision of units.
The minister suggested that this will require finding additional internal sources of funding.
"We do not rule out that we will have to look for additional internal funding sources," Marchenko said.
"I can say for sure, given the current situation, there will be no additional need in funds for the first quarter [of 2024]," he added.
Background:
- Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that the military command of Ukraine, on an ongoing basis, forms its requests for ammunition, weapons and human resources, but it didn't send a request for a specific number of people to be mobilised.
- At the same time, a few days earlier, Davyd Arakhamia, the leader of the Servant of the People party faction in the parliament, said that the Cabinet of Ministers was supposed to submit a bill on mobilisation to the Parliament on 25 December. Arakhamia reported that the military leadership requested the mobilisation of 500,000 military personnel.
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