During the meeting of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Development Council, President Petro Poroshenko said that "one of the important decisions has been recently made to deepen the decentralisation process, namely, the growing role of public control in this process".

"I appealed to the Ministry of Finance. I am grateful to the Government and the Prime Minister for their support in providing public control over local finances," Petro Poroshenko said.

"The Ministry of Finance has opened access to local budgets. Now the hromada can see and properly evaluate both the salaries of executives and the amount of deposits," the President said. He noted that since decentralisation, the salary of the urban-type settlement head has increased several times, but this often does not lead to the effective use of local budget funds and the resolution of urgent hromada problems.

"The salary was UAH 4000, and after amalgamation into an AH – UAH 39 000. That is it, decentralisation has been completed. A sum that is left goes on deposit. Before the elections – I will buy votes and will be elected again," the President commented on the situation with the use of local budgets in individual hromadas.

The Head of State stressed: "I did not organise decentralisation for this," the President said, urging the citizens to demand changes in the lives of towns and villages and insist on using funds to address the most acute problems.

"The argument that there is no money is no longer working,” Added Petro Poroshenko.

The President stressed that the decentralisation reform is implemented in order to bring power closer to people. "People clearly understand that to solve hromada issues they know whom to address and whom to ask from," he stressed and added that everything would be done so that people would not suffer from the inaction of the local authorities.

At the same time, the Head of State noted that this reform is still far from being completed, but it is among the ones which positive results have been already noticed by the society.

He especially stressed that the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast shows good indicators among the Ukrainian regions in the issue of AH formation. 30 amalgamated hromadas, which consist of 136 local councils, representing 26.4% of their total number, have been established. A perspective plan is scheduled for the formation of 59 AHs. Currently, the work on eliminating so-called “white spots” is underway, as the oblast is covered by the perspective plan by 94.3%.

"We will not have "white spots". We will bring decentralisation as means of protecting people to effective implementation," said the President.

He said that the budgets of AHs are growing twice as fast as the budgets of the oblast. In general, amalgamation of hromadas has provided on average a 6-fold increase of their own budget revenues per capita in comparison with 2015.