The sustenance level in Ukraine, which is used in many social payouts as a base to calculate entitlements from, could be soon linked to the size of average wage. This way, vulnerable categories of people who are receiving social payments should be better off compared to the current standard of calculations when the base sustenance level is set arbitrary.

Sustenance level in Ukraine to be linked to the average salary

The head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Social Policy and the representative of the pro-presidential faction “Servant of the People” Galina Tretyakova suggested to link the official sustenance level to the average salary in the country.

“Sustenance level” is the officially set number in hryvnia per month that is required for a person to survive. However, it’s been in the past set arbitrary and most of the time it wasn’t really possible to live on that amount. Current number is only USD 82 per month, which is not enough even in a cheap country like Ukraine to survive on. But because many other social payouts are linked to this official number, the government simply couldn’t set it higher, for the lack of budget on various payments that would rise from that.

Now the governmental official is proposing to link the official sustenance level with the average wage. This would be a more realistic proposal, which could possibly work better for the recipients of government payments.

“In the legislative proposal № 3515 I made a suggestion to link the sustenance level to the size of the average salary and first make it equal to 40% of the average salary in the country. At the end, I would like the sustenance level equal to 60% of the average salary. As it is stated in the proposal, sustenance level in Ukraine will increase by 1% up to 50% over the next 10 years. If we make it 50% immediately, it will lead to unbalanced budgeting,” Tretyakova explained in her interview to RBC Ukraine.

Tretyakova is also convinced that there is a need for a special demographic agency to conduct surveys and study various types of households with different income levels. Such an agency should be operating within the Ministry of Social Policy.

According to the latest reports:

• The average nominal monthly wage of a full-time employee in Ukraine increased by 15% in January 2021 compared to January 2020 and reached 12,337 UAH (roughly 445 USD).
• The official sustenance level of the working-age population went up from 2,197 UAH to 2,270 UAH (82 USD) in December 2021.

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