Ukraine approves final law for minerals deal with US
Photo: Rada approves budget payments to Washington (Vitalii Nosach, RBC-Ukraine)
The agreement with the United States on the use of Ukraine's natural resources provides for payments from the state budget. The Verkhovna Rada has approved amendments to the Budget Code, according to Ukrainian MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak.
According to him, 309 MPs supported draft law No. 13256.
Amendments to the Budget Code are needed to implement the provision on filling the US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.
Ukraine's contribution will consist of half of the funds received after the agreement enters into force from:
- royalties for the extraction of minerals (oil, gas, gas condensate, and everything specified in Annex A to the agreement) from new licenses
- issuance of new special permits for subsoil use
- sales of the state-owned portion of production under new production sharing agreements.
This money will be credited to a special fund of the state budget and transferred to the Reconstruction Fund.
Ukraine's contribution in money
Earlier, Roksolana Pidlasa, chairman of the Rada's Budget Committee, gave the following figures for Ukraine's contribution: about UAH 3 billion over 5 years.
"At least, if the Agreement had been signed in 2019, this is the amount that would have been transferred to the Fund as Ukraine's contribution by this time," she wrote.
Ukraine-US minerals deal
On May 1, Ukraine and the United States signed an agreement to establish a US-Ukraine investment fund. The Verkhovna Rada ratified the intergovernmental agreement on May 8. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the law on May 12, completing the ratification process.
Taras Kachka, Deputy Minister of Economy and Trade Representative of Ukraine, said that there are two additional technical agreements that the parties will sign later. However, they do not need to be ratified by the Verkhovna Rada. These agreements have not been made public, and the government refused to provide them to MPs.
