Autostrada reveals UAH 15 billion debt that forced it to halt work

Filed 1h ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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Lamentation

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Construction firm Autostrada says Ukraine owes it about UAH 15 billion (roughly $360 million) for completed work, after the Finance Ministry abruptly halted capital expenditure payments nationwide. Founder Maksym Shkil said the decision came 'out of nowhere in a single day, without any discussion,' forcing the company to wind down production and mothball sites even as winter preparation work stalls.

Among the unpaid work: major highway repairs, protection of energy facilities, and a water pipeline supplying more than a million residents in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after the Kakhovka dam's destruction. Shkil said the company financed about 40% of all Ukraine's highway repair work this year from its own resources, expecting reimbursement once a reserve fund was replenished.

Kyiv's metro extension budget was separately cut from UAH 10 billion to UAH 1.6 billion, though several projects remain on schedule for December completion. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi has called the state of public finances near critical, and Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko says the budget situation is the tightest since the 2022 invasion began.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A government stopping payment on winter infrastructure with no warning and no discussion is the fiscal version of skipping the electric bill and hoping the lights stay on anyway. The company kept building on a handshake and a promised reimbursement, which is a rougher way to run a road crew than most banks would allow. Somebody's going to be cold this winter over an accounting decision made in a single afternoon.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Lamentation · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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