On Friday, 25 Mar, the Ukrainian Parliament passed its amended new budget with the highest number of deputy votes in Ukraine's history. For the long discussion, see the Zerkalo Nedeli article here.

The highlights are: (from finance.ua, via the Ukraine Daily Report as well as the Zerkalo article I already mentioned)

• The bill was supported by 376 of 450 deputies
• Of course NU and BYT supported it, but so did the Socialists and the majority of former pro-Kuchma factions and the Communists (!)
• The biggest groups lined up against the bill were 50 of the 53 Party of Regions deputies and 12 of 17 Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs deputies (Kinakh's party).
• The bill is close to balance with UAH 108.5bn in revenues and UAH 115.3bn in expenditures.
• In the view of the Yushchenko folks, the bill is focused on making the money to increase social spending by cancelling selective tax benefits and exemptions to some businesses. Tymoshenko threw in her usual arch commentary this way: "Everyone will feel that life has become better except for ten or twenty enterprises which had unjustified benefits. Do not pay attention to the screams of the owners of those few enterprises."
  
• The budget includes a lot more social spending. A lot. Pensioners are getting an additional 12%, new mothers will be getting 3,380 hriven ($637) when they give birth and 5,113 hriven ($967) more in the first year. The minimum wage goes up to 332 hriven by July.
• Zerkalo points out that to make up the rest of the new costs (after getting rid of industry priviledge) the government is slashing like crazy. So capital construction, VAT breaks, and maybe even the private entreprenuerial classification by which many Ukrainians, including myself and my fellow employees work here at Celenia, work.
  
• The changes were coming so fast and furious (and mostly from the Cabinet) near the end that many deputies were voting blind and there are massive gray areas all throughout the bill. 

Having big, high sounding documents with massive question marks everywhere is actually pretty common practice as far as I have seen in Ukrainian legislation. Never judge bills by their clauses here. The fogginess makes implementation problematic, so unscrupulous regimes (cough kough, kugch, kuchma, cough) can leave loopholes for buddies to squirm through, then make sure those buddies aren't prosecuted. (but opponents are)

Yushchenko's Cabinet back in 2000, with Tymoshenko foremost among them, did a good job of implementation. So I'm guardedly optimistic now. I will give a couple positive ratings over in Words an Deeds next to Yushchenko's social spending promises, which will of course be dependent on these changes actually happening. I'm putting a negative next to the jobs creation promise, though, because I don't see how he's going to be able to increase the number of public works jobs while slashing capital construction to the bone.

We'll see how well they pull off the bill. Personally I think the big mother's day present is rather silly, even in a country that's loosing population, but I like that they're doing something. It's a good way to get experience quickly.

And the Party of Regions dissenters make me like the bill more every time they open their mouths. Take this winner of the quote of the week:

Tariel Vasadze, who is the owner of the Zaporizhzhya Automobile Building Plant, sharply criticized the proposed bill. In response to this Tymoshenko stated, "Let's be honest, the actual owners of ore extracting enterprises are sitting in the parliament as well as the actual owners of car producers … So, let's learn to share with society. Let's slice off the fat a little bit and give others a chance to live."

How can I not like the bill after that?