MOSCOW, June 10 (RIA Novosti) – The Donets Basin, commonly called Donbas, has all the possibilities to create its own autonomous financial system and Kiev understands this, Russian Presidential Aide Sergei Glazyev said Tuesday.
Donbas is an industrialized region that includes Ukraine's eastern republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as Russia's southwest region bordering Ukraine.
“Economically Donbas has the potential to set its own banking and monetary system,” Glazyev said at a roundtable discussion held at Rossiya Segodnya International Multimedia Press Center in Moscow.
He also stressed that it would take two to three months in course of which “our credits will have to help Donbas avoid the collapse in its fiscal system.”
“But this is, too, a solvable task, and I think Kiev understands this,” he added.
“We can help our colleagues set up an optimized fiscal system,” the president’s aide said, advising to get rid of the value added tax which is hard to implement at the moment, and the implementation of ecologically oriented taxation.
According to Glazyev, financial capabilities of Donbas will allow the region to avoid a sharp decline in living standards that the rest of Ukraine will see.
“According to our estimates, production in Ukraine will slump by at least 10 percent, and the hryvna [Ukraine’s national currency] will weaken at least by half. On the back of increasing tariffs and decreasing social benefits, freezing of budgetary workers’ salaries, Ukraine is prone to see its living standards decline by half,” Glazyev said.
At the same time the president’s aide stressed that Donbas can potentially increase its living standards by half, and become the most prosperous region of the new Ukraine.
