Sienkevych on Mykolaiv budget for 2026: «It will be meagre»

Mayor of Mykolaiv Oleksandr Sienkevych. Photo: NikVesti

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych said that the city budget for 2026 will be significantly limited and will be formed with a focus on the basic needs of the city.

The mayor said this in a comment to the correspondent of NikVesti.

«The budget will be meagre. Starting from Monday, we will gather a commission and submit protected and priority expenditures to the deputies for consideration. That is, all sectors, all key spending units, departments, offices and utilities will report to the MPs on how much money they need for salaries, utility bills, fuel, consumables, paper, pencils and so on. After they have all reported, we will allocate the money for the entire 12 months of the next year. We will report on the figure and we will have a budget for current and capital expenditures. Then, in the second stage, we will distribute these expenditures on an object-by-object basis. Each of the deputies will see each object,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Read also the NikVesti article: «City Council Session Approves Budget Adjustments for 2025: What Housing and Utilities Will Receive and What Items Were Cut».

As a reminder, three weeks ago, all budget payments were suspended in Mykolaiv, as reported by sources in the Mykolaiv City Council. The main spending units were then instructed to suspend all payments for expenditures that did not relate to protected items, namely public sector salaries and utility bills. At the time, it was reported that the reason for this was the lack of budget funds to cover the protected budget items until the end of the year. The problem had been known for a long time, as the annual budget had not included funds for mandatory payments by the end of the year. The mayor's office hoped that budget overruns and savings during the year would help find the funds. However, this did not happen.

Later, Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych said that the city budget was looking for 60 million hryvnias for salaries and utilities.

NikVesti analysed the proposed changes to the distribution of expenditures in Mykolaiv's budget and calculated that 7.2 million hryvnias would be allocated for salaries and utility bills (in the budget, this is an expenditure item «Management and administration in the relevant area») for the city's budget managers, rather than the 60 million hryvnias previously mentioned by the mayor.