Expert: Groysman will try to shift responsibility for road repairs to local authorities before the elections

Before the election, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman is trying to shift responsibility for road repairs to local authorities.

Viktor Medvid, director of the William Invest Expert consulting company, told this in a commentary to GolosUA.

"Decentralization already exists. Groysman spoke about changes in terms of the distribution of state budget funds. The idea is to transfer the functions of customers to the local authorities of those road sections that are adjacent to local roads. I think this is not advisable because the state pursues a decentralization policy based on the principle of delegating responsibilities to the local level and shifting responsibility for their repair to local budgets that do not have the funds. At the same time, most of the taxes are paid to the state budget," Mr. Medved said.

He clarified that road decentralization is a political distancing of the authorities from the problem.

"If the Cabinet of Ministers had allocated 25 billion to each region, no one would have refused it. When we have minus 400 billion and divide it among 20 regions, we will get a hole in the budget of each region of another minus 20 billion. Each governor will say that he did nothing because there is not enough money. It turns out that we are implementing decentralization of mismanagement and corruption. This is just political distancing from the problem. Before the elections, Groysman is trying to shift the responsibility for road repairs to the local level," Medved summarized.

In March 2017, Groysman said that 95% of Ukraine's roads were in a terrible state. He promised that in five to seven years, roads across the country would be of high quality.

The head of the State Agency of Motor Roads of Ukraine (Ukravtodor), Slavomir Novak, said on December 15 that in 2017, 2,100 kilometers of roads were repaired in Ukraine, the highest figure in the last five years.