Ukraine 4M18 budget revenue increases 5% yoy, 2% below plan

Ukraine’s 4M18 state budget revenue increase 4.8% yoy
to UAH 272.5 bln, which is 1.8% below plan, the State Treasury reported on May
2. Net tax revenue increased 11.0% yoy to UAH 121.5 bln (1.0% below plan),
while  custom revenue rose 8.8% yoy to UAH 99.1 bln (4.5% below plan).

In April, net tax revenue surged 57.3% to UAH 29.1
mln, which is 12.4% above plan. At the same time, custom revenue slid 0.1% yoy
to UAH 24.2 bln, which is 10.8% below plan.

Local budgets’ 4M18 revenue increased 17.6% yoy to UAH
72.6 bln, outperforming plan by 0.7%. Social payments (personal income tax and
pension fund contributions paid by employers) jumped 27.3% yoy to UAH 68.4 bln.

Evgeniya Akhtyrko: Significant improvement of tax collection in April helped to improve
the budget’s 4M18 performance, as compared with 1Q18. At the same time, customs revenue remains weak, which is likely to be
related to an essential slowdown in import growth. Meanwhile, the surge in tax
collection might point to the fact that tax authorities are resorting to the
methods of “manual” collection, instead of an automatic regime, to meet plan.