The National Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Company of Ukraine (NPBU) Supervisory Board is concerned about public broadcasting budget limits, proposed by Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, as reported in Supervisory Board statement.

According to Ministry of Finance of Ukraine mail to State Committee in Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine from 07\28\2016, № 31-04110-09-9/21934, the funding limit for the program «Financial support of National Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Company of Ukraine» is 700 million hryvnias. However, legitimate amount is about 1,26 billion hryvnias.

Supervisory Board accents that underfinancing of Public broadcasting will make the program quality improvement impossible, thus undermining the reform credibility. In addition, it will reduce the citizen right to receive unprejudiced information, because Public broadcasting is the unique broadcaster, aimed at social interests and independent from state and private owners.  

Also there is marked, that establishing of Public broadcasting system is among the very first and most important Ukrainian media commitments to European Council and EU. The necessity of sufficient funding for Public broadcasting is repeatedly mentioned in European Council Recommendations. For example, in 2009 Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in recommendation №1878 accented on necessity of guaranteed and appropriate funding for Public broadcasting to make possible realization of their goals.

Thus Supervisory Board urges Ministry of Finance of Ukraine to provide a statutory amount of funding for budget program «Financial support of National Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Company of Ukraine» – 0,2% of total budget outgo over the past year.

Also media experts urged the Government and Parliament to prevent introducing and adopting of budget-2017 while amount of Public broadcasting funding is cut.