Ukraine government approves 2025 draft budget, PM says

(Reuters) -Ukraine's government has approved the 2025 draft budget, which has a strong focus on defence spending, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Friday.

Shmyhal, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the draft, to be submitted to parliament, provided for 2 trillion hryvnias ($48.2 billion)in revenues and 3.6 trillion hryvnias in expenditures.

The draft, put together 2-1/2 years into the Russian invasion of the country, also included a provision of 2.22 trillion hryvnias ($53.5 bln) for defence.

Shmyhal said preparations in drafting the budget, the third since the start of the invasion, had been completed "despite all the challenges and uncertainty".

"The priority for this budget is very clear -- the country's defence and security," he wrote. "We will again direct all domestic resources to these objectives."

There would be, he said, "more money for Ukrainian weapons, equipment, drones."

More than 400 billion hryvnias would be allocated for social security, with funds for indexing pensions and providing subsidies and a total of 211 billion hrynias on health care.

Local authorities would receive assistance and advantageous credits provided for entrepreneurs. Capital expenditure would be made more transparent and the government would press on with rebuilding projects and those in the energy sphere.

($1 = 41.3300 hryvnias)

(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Ron Popeski; editing by Diane Craft and Alistair Bell)