Huge Amount To Be Transferred From State Budget To Lukashenka Foundation

What will it be spent on?

Almost 1 billion rubles will be allocated from the republican budget to the Aliaksandr Lukashenka Foundation, as follows from the draft law on the budget for 2024. This is one and a half times more than a year earlier, writes zerkalo.io.

How will Lukashenka's fund grow?

The Aliaksandr Lukashenka Foundation will receive 335.5 million rubles more from the budget in 2024 than this year, according to the draft law. The size of the fund will be 999 million 658 thousand rubles — this is 2.5% of all revenues of the republican budget. It was larger in size only twice — in 2022 (1.169 billion) and in 2018 (1.2 billion).

In order to create this fund in such a size, officials once again abolished the article of the Budget Code (which in the hierarchy of regulations is above the law), which limits the maximum amounts for reserve funds and which spells out the purposes for which this money can be allocated.

Article 42 of the Budget Code: “The total amount of reserve funds in the republican budget cannot exceed 2% of the republican budget’s own income without taking into account the income of state target budget funds.” Article 43 of the Budget Code states that the size of the president's fund cannot exceed 1% of budget revenues.

What will the money from this fund be spent on?

The draft law of the decree on the republican budget states that money from this fund is used to increase the salaries of a certain category of workers:

• state civil servants;

• employees of budgetary organizations and other organizations receiving subsidies, whose employees are equal in wages to employees of budgetary organizations;

• monetary allowances for military personnel, commanding and rank-and-file personnel of bodies and units.

All these groups of workers already receive salaries from the budget; the officials did not explain for which purpose it is necessary to pass part of this money through Lukashenka’s fund.

In addition, this money can be used to provide pensions for military personnel, commanding and rank-and-file personnel of bodies and units. And also to finance the construction or reconstruction of roads, as well as facilities included in regional investment programs.

Important to note, from mid-2022 the Ministry of Finance stopped reporting to citizens on how budget funds are spent. Accordingly, it is unknown how funds from the treasury, as well as from similar funds, were spent this year.