The executive committee in Mykolaiv took note of the public assessment of the budget, which highlighted its imbalance

The Mykolaiv Executive Committee has taken note of the public assessment of the budget, which criticised expenditure on municipal enterprises. Photo: NikVesti

The Executive Committee of Mykolaiv City Council has taken note of the findings of a public assessment of the budget, in which experts criticised the structure of expenditure, described the city’s budget as unbalanced and questioned the effectiveness of funding for municipal enterprises.

The relevant decision, dated 24 June and published on the Mykolaiv City Council’s website, is reported by ‘NikVesti’.

This refers to a report presented in May 2026 by Tetyana Zolotukhina, an expert from the NGO ‘Mykolaiv City Development Fund’. In it, the authors concluded that Mykolaiv’s budget for 2026 is unbalanced: according to their estimates, the city’s own revenue is sufficient to cover only 82 per cent of planned expenditure, whilst the sources of funding for the deficit remain unclear.

Other key observations from the public assessment included:

• The city is increasingly having to rely on its own revenue. State support is gradually being reduced, in particular the amount of the education grant is decreasing.

• A number of social programmes have been cut from the budget. Funding for social services centres, veterans’ support programmes and the municipal war veterans’ support centre has been reduced.

• At the same time, significant funds continue to be channelled to municipal enterprises. In 2026, more than 1.4 billion hryvnias could be spent on supporting them, and together with other related expenditure — more than 1.7 billion hryvnias.

• Experts have questioned the effectiveness of such funding. In their view, the city authorities have not provided sufficient justification for the large investments in municipal enterprises and have not demonstrated a systematic analysis of the implementation of their financial plans.

• Certain figures in the municipal enterprises’ financial reports have also been called into question. In particular, the documents showed profits of 10 hryvnias for some enterprises, whilst open data indicates significant losses.

• There are insufficient funds in the development budget for new projects. Around 300 million hryvnias have been earmarked for investment projects, of which almost 70 per cent will go towards completing projects already underway.

• The absence of KPIs for officials, issues regarding bonus payments, and possible duplication of functions between organisational units.

Tetiana Zolotukhina, an expert from the NGO ‘Mykolaiv City Development Fund’, who presented a public assessment of the city’s expenditure. Photo: NikVesti

Separately, the experts recommended conducting an independent management audit of municipal enterprises, improving approaches to budget planning, reviewing spending priorities and introducing digital record-keeping for subsidised transport.

At the same time, during the discussion of the report, city council representatives disagreed with some of the conclusions, citing inaccuracies in certain calculations. In particular, the Department of Housing and Communal Services explained that a significant proportion of the budget funds allocated to municipal enterprises was linked to ensuring the operation of critical infrastructure, the purchase of equipment and the implementation of specific projects.

Consequently, the executive committee decided to take note of the conclusions and proposals put forward by the civil society organisation, together with the explanations provided by the city council’s executive bodies and the municipal enterprise «Mykolaivelektrotrans». Responsibility for monitoring the implementation of the decision has been assigned to the mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych.

A public assessment of the city’s expenditure was presented in Mykolaiv. Photo: NikVesti

It should be recalled that following the presentation of the public assessment of the budget, Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych questioned some of the study’s conclusions. He stated that the authors of the assessment had failed to take into account the specific nature of public transport operations, in particular the difference between the municipal enterprises «Mykolaivelektrotrans» and «Mykolaivpastrans», and had also incorrectly compared Mykolaiv’s figures with those of other cities, notably Lviv.

At the same time, the mayor supported the very idea of public oversight of the budget, emphasising that such studies must be based on a clear methodology and comprehensible assessment criteria.