Minister proposes to finance the Ukrainian culture by means of excise taxes and lotteries

Ukrainian Minister for Culture Yevhen Nishchuk told NVUA about the financing of culture in the country and proposed a number of measures to restore the situation. As such, Nishchuk said that the situation with culture financing in Ukraine is difficult, noting that it will not improve in the nearest future. Nishchuk stated that the Ministry is discussing a bill according to which the means to finance culture would be collected from lottery revenues and excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. The Minister noted that the money should be handled by a special cultural fund, which would include “people with high moral authority.” The Minster also proposed a tax to rent foreign movies, akin to the one in France, where rental rates go to the development of the domestic movie industry. Nishchuk also proposes to abolish the VAT for investors into the social cultural product. “For example, the starting budget for cinema this year was 110 million UAH, however only 60 million remained after the sequestering. It is clear that we were unable to announce a search for new projects in such conditions. What is more, for some time we were even unable to finance the projects we had already launched – the budget did not have money and the treasury did not allow payments to pass,” said Nishchuk.