PUBLIC EXPENDITURES OF UKRAINE: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS FOR THEIR SOLUTION

Abstract

The dramatic changes in the processes of ensuring the functioning and development of the Ukrainian State due to the full-scale military aggression of the neighboring country have actualized the need for optimal use of public finances in the context of their critical shortage, and, consequently, the need for an in-depth study of the composition and structure of public expenditures in recent years in the context of identifying the underlying problems of their management in Ukraine and substantiating possible ways and prospects for their solution. The issues of optimizing and increasing the efficiency of public spending have been the focus of public administration theorists and practitioners for many decades, but in recent years these issues have become especially relevant as a result of the global economic crisis caused by the pandemic and further deepened by the full-scale invasion of one of the largest countries in Europe. At the same time, the functioning of the domestic economy in a full-fledged war has necessitated a new look at the existing system of public spending to ensure a clear separation of general problems of inefficiency from those caused by hostilities and, thus, to understand the prospects for addressing each of the problematic aspects in the postwar period. The purpose of the study is to analytically identify the existing problems in the system of public expenditures in Ukraine and to substantiate possible ways to improve their efficiency. The analysis showed a significant predominance of consumption expenditures in the structure of public expenditures in Ukraine. The article analyzes the functional structure of state budget expenditures and distributes them according to the priority criterion, examines the composition of planned public expenditures on the agricultural sector in 2023 and the results expected from them. The comparison of the effectiveness of the most priority public expenditures in Ukraine with the indicators of individual EU countries allowed identifying the key problems of budget expenditures in Ukraine and outlining the promising ways to solve them.