Bureaucracy Grew 23.9% in Five Years

Enactments relating to administrative reform in Ukraine have increased the number of executive authorities, government institutions, and expenses involved in their maintenance, UNIAN was told by experts from the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine after analyzing the results of reorganization within the state administration network.

Expert estimates show that over 100 presidential edicts and 300 Cabinet resolutions aimed at regularizing executive authorities and their staff, enacted in 1994 through 1999, have increased the total number of executive authorities by 21 entities and the bureaucratic staff has gone up by 34,800 or 23.9%. Simultaneously, the number of financial and fiscal institutions has increased by 20,400 employees (23%) and their ratio in the government machine has reached almost 50%. The Accounting Chamber’s statistics show that over the same period budget expenditures to maintain the financial and fiscal bureaucracy have risen 2.2 times, currently surpassing those for the maintenance of ministries and other executive authorities and their local bodies 2.4 times. When asked by The Day’s Oleksandr MIKHELSON to comment on these figures, the Cabinet’s press service merely admitted that “the number of employees of the executive branch has indeed risen in recent years.”