(Not) the last word of the President. VoxCheck of Petro Poroshenko

A month before the first round of the elections was not simple for Poroshenko. Whole March there was an ongoing notorious journalistic investigation by BIHUS.info about probable stealing in Ukroboronprom, in which people connected with the upholder were involved.

But despite this scandal Petro Poroshenko hardly changed his rhetoric. He carried on telling voters about the reforms which took place over his term of office and explained: pensions indexation and monetization of subsidies are absolutely not connected with the elections and are not vote-buying, since the law was ratified still in 2017.

About IT-sector in Ukraine

According to the data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, in 2018 category “Information and telecommunications” formed 3.8% of GDP, in 2017 – 3.7%, in 2016 – 3.7% of GDP, in 2015 – 3.6% of GDP.

Though it also contains components which are not IT sphere per se, for instance, production of films and videos, publishing of books, periodical publications, etc. If to separate only those codes from Classification of Economic Activities which are used by IT-companies, then we will get 2.5% from GDP in 2016 (there are no updated figures). But it is doubtful that share of books publishing, videos production and others will suddenly decrease to 0.6% of GDP (half the number, if to compare with 2016 data)

In 2018 according to estimations of a portal DOU around 160 000 specialists worked in IT-sphere. Based on PwC forecast, in 2 years, in 2021, number of employees will grow to 179 000. So, it will not increase by 50 000, but only by 19 000.

About pensioners who receive minimum pension

According to the data of the Pension Fund, minimum pension (not more than 1.5 thousand UAH) was received by around 2,2 million of people.

About the OSCE Monitoring Mission

The mandate of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission covers the entire territory of Ukraine.

About gas consumption in Ukraine

Petro Poroshenko means that according to the gas contract of 2009 Ukraine had to buy 52 billion m3 of gas per year. If it did not consume such volume, it still should have paid for this (condition “take or pay”). Instead of this Ukraine stopped buying gas from the Russian Federation and imported from Europe 14.1 billion m3 of gas in 2017 and 10.6 billion m3 of gas in 2018.

About the number of Ukrainians who consider themselves to be happy

Apparently, Petro Poroshenko is talking about research done by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, which was published in July 2018 (the very survey was conducted in May). According to it 63% of Ukrainians considered themselves happy or rather happy, and in May 2017 – 53%. So the number of those people increased by 10 percentage points, or by 19% ((63/53-1) * 100%), which only proves the President’s statement more.

About pensions indexation

Apparently Petro Poroshenko is talking about the pensions reform, which was ratified in autumn of 2017. The law states that the Cabinet of Ministers should establish a date of indexation. Such resolution concerning indexation from March 1 was ratified on February 20, 2019.

But before ratification of the pension reform there was a norm in Article 42 of the Law about Pension Insurance, according to which pensions should have been indexed based on the legislation on the indexation of population monetary incomes.  In its turn, Article 4 of the Legislation of Ukraine “On Indexation of Population Monetary Incomes” presupposed increase of population monetary incomes because of indexation from the first day of a month that comes after a month in which consumer price index is published, in case when a consumer price index is higher than an indexation threshold, which is 103% (up till 2016 – 101%) from the moment of a last review of income size. However, this norm was not followed from 2013 till 2017.