Third of economy is not functioning now – Finance Minister

About 30% of businesses have completely or temporarily stopped work in Ukraine, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said, citing preliminary data based on taxes.

"Our preliminary tax calculations… indicate that about 30% of the economy is either not working or temporarily not working. These are calculations based on the payment of personal income tax, unified social tax," he said on the air of the telethon on Saturday.

"A third of the economy is not functioning now," the finance minister said.

Speaking about reformatting the work of customs, based on military conditions, he said that discussions are underway. Marchenko said that Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal set the task of changing approaches at customs so that its work is as fast as possible, fast and transparent.

"We are actively working on this," Marchenko said.

He said the main channel for meeting the needs of the national budget is internal and external borrowing, since tax and customs revenues have significantly decreased due to Russia's full-scale war. At the same time, Ukraine is servicing its debt in full.

"A default did not threaten us and does not threaten us. Firstly, our debt load is not so large, especially this year. Secondly, we carefully service our debts. We do not use such words. But for our aggressors, we hope it [default] will come soon," Marchenko said.

Source: www.en.interfax.com.ua