State budget 2016 focused on security, defence – Yatsenyuk

"The budget is, of course, focused on the national security and defence. As it was announced before, we will allocate UAH 100 billion for these areas. After all, the war is far from being over as evidenced by the latest reports. In addition, we need to keep the budget deficit at 3.7%, as agreed with the IMF. I also want to pass the budget along with the tax reform. I believe that the draft, proposed by the Finance Ministry, is the good basis for real tax transformations. To carry out this reform, we need to cut the state budget expenses by more than UAH 60 billion," he said. Yatsenyuk added that the budget spending would be primarily reduced through the expenditure optimization. The Prime Minister noted that significant part of expenses had already lowered to the level of local budgets after the decentralization reform.