Official rates of banking metals from national bank as of December 21
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
The State Budget of Ukraine for 2021 provides for an increase in funding for medicine, education and science, as well as the security and defense sector, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“Firstly, this is money for medicine. Almost UAH 160 billion. It is the most during the years of Ukraine’s independence. … We have raised salaries for doctors by 30%, but we all understand that this is not enough, so we strive to continue increasing their salaries in 2021,” Zelensky said in his vlog posted on his official Telegram channel on Friday night.
We also plan to equip 210 ER departments and 450 new ambulances. Supplemental payments for doctors who fight COVID-19 will be continued.
Next year education and science will receive UAH 26 billion more, and in total almost UAH 170 billion will be allocated for their development. In particular, the salaries of educators will increase by 20%.
As for defense expenditures, the budget of the Ministry of Defense in 2017 amounted to UAH 69 billion, in 2018 – UAH 86 billion, in 2019 – UAH 102 billion, and in 2021 it will reach over UAH 117 billion.
In general, the budget for the security and defense sphere, including expenditures on intelligence, the State Border Guard Service and the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, amounted to more than UAH 267 billion.
Also, according to the president, starting from January 1 next year, the minimum wage will increase to UAH 6,000, and during the year it will increase to UAH 6,500.
The President thanked MPs from the Servant of the People party and other political forces for supporting the state budget and passing a number of other important laws. In particular, Zelensky noted the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of a law on the restoration of the powers of the National Agency for Corruption Prevention, which were previously revoked by a decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.
The total amount of applications for budgetary value added tax (VAT) refunds in December exceeds UAH 14 billion, and it will be financed on time, said head of the State Tax Service Oleksiy Liubchenko.
“In December, we have full understanding that the application for UAH 14.1 billion will be given to payers, which didn’t happen in December 2019,” Liubchenko said on the air of Savik Shuster’s program Freedom of Speech (Svoboda Slova) on Friday.
He noted that following the results of 11 months of this year, applications for budgetary VAT refunds amounted to UAH 122.7 billion, while UAH 128 billion was reimbursed during this period.
TAS Insurance Group (Kyiv) in January-November 2020 paid UAH 792.37 million of insurance claims under concluded insurance contracts, which is 21.27% more than in the same period a year earlier (UAH 653.38 million).
According to the insurer’s website, in particular, the company reimbursed UAH 291.66 million under OSAGO policies, which is 36.81% of the total payments for the reporting period and is 11.9% more than the corresponding figure for the 11 months of last year.
The second place in the portfolio of the company’s payments with a share of 30.79% is taken by KASKO: under land transport insurance contracts, TAS paid UAH 244.01 million, which is 42.5% more than was paid in January-November 2019.
Under Green Card policies, TAS Insurance Group reimbursed UAH 123.78 million over the 11 months, which is 15.62% of the total amount of the insurer’s payments and is 28.1% more than this figure for January-November last year.
The volume of payments under voluntary medical insurance contracts increased even more (by 52%) over the year: UAH 107.7 million of compensations were paid under them. Thus, the share of voluntary medical insurance in the insurer’s payment portfolio amounted to 13.59%. In January-November, the company paid out UAH 5.49 million under property insurance contracts. During the reporting period, UAH 19.73 million of compensation were paid under other insurance contracts.
The Verkhovna Rada has registered a draft resolution on the dismissal of Serhiy Shkarlet from the post of Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine.
Document card No. 4525 appeared on the parliament’s website.
The authors of the resolution are deputies of the Holos and European Solidarity factions.
The text of the resolution has not been made public yet.
As reported, on December 17, the Verkhovna Rada appointed Serhiy Shkarlet as Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine.
Representatives of Holos stated that they had registered the facts of “pushing the buttons” during the voting for the appointment of Shkarlet. The European Solidarity faction also announced violations during the voting and asked the regulatory committee to review the situation. Representatives of both factions announced their intention to go to court to appeal against the appointment of Shkarlet to the post.
Illegal possession of weapons, anonymous reports of bomb threats, threats to the life of public people are the most frequent manifestations of extremism in Ukraine, according to the results of a study conducted by the Ukrainian Politics Foundation/UP Foundation.
At a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Friday, head of the Ukrainian Politics Foundation/UP Foundation, political experts Kostiantyn Bondarenko noted that there is no legal concept of “extremism” in Ukraine, there is no law that would provide for the fight against extremism, and some of its manifestations, such as terrorism, are prosecuted by law.
According to him, despite the fact that Ukraine does not have such a level of extremism as in the Middle East or Europe, manifestations of ethno-nationalist extremism are not isolated.
“We are talking about the need to prevent severe manifestations of extremism. In order not to be late, we believe that already now it is necessary to do a number of studies, develop a methodological and legislative basis for combating extremism, so that in the future it does not become the most important problem for Ukraine,” Bondarenko emphasized.
In turn, Lev Bondarenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Politics Foundation, UP Foundation, published the results of a study on manifestations of extremism in Ukraine. The study was conducted from December 2019 to November 2020 by monitoring media reports throughout Ukraine, based on ten key criteria that fall under the manifestation of extremism.
“As for the overall results for the year, the following picture has developed: most of all manifestations of extremism were recorded according to the criterion of ‘illegal possession, manufacture and distribution of weapons’ – 746 such cases … The second place is occupied with attempts to prepare terrorist acts, mining of buildings, all statements that we hear about mined premises … there have been 567 of them this year. The third place is taken by the threat to the lives of civil servants, politicians, journalists, public figures … someone have their cars blown up, someone is threatened by force, someone is kidnapped,” he said.
Also, according to Bondarenko, over the past year there have been 14 cases of attempts to seize power and government agencies.
In terms of the number of cases of extremism, Kyiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk regions are “in the lead” in the regional scope.
“Basically in Ukraine, right-wing radical groups are associated with extremism. To a certain extent, this corresponds to reality … Despite the fact that these groups and political structures have combat experience, in our opinion (and this is confirmed by law enforcement agencies), they are not ready to introduce forceful methods of struggle,” head of projects of the Foundation Ukrainian Politics/UP Foundation Oleh Vytiahov said.
“The fight against extremism is being conducted chaotically in Ukraine … Certain crimes that carry extremist signs are attributed to the jurisdiction of various law enforcement agencies … We propose … to systematically work to create a state program to counter extremism. In addition to the right-wing radical, there is also the left-radical extremism,” he stressed.
“It is necessary to define what extremism is within the framework of the legislative field of Ukraine … Then we will be able to develop a law on countering extremism.”
