The Ukrainian Finance Ministry has assessed local budget resource in 2015 at UAH 266.9 billion, which is 20.6% up on 2014, Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said at a meeting on the budget decentralization with the participation of the prime minister.

"The total local budgets in 2015 grew by 54.6% from 52.1% in 2014," the minister said.

She said that additional resource of local budgets for additional functions transferred to them by the government will be UAH 22-23 billion.

Some UAH 36 billion is foreseen for the fulfillment of self-government functions, which is UAH 20 billion up on 2014, she added.

"Today, local authorities could form their local budgets themselves from September 15," she said. The ground for this will be the government's draft national budget.

Jaresko said that as of January 12, 2014 a total of 356 local budgets have been approved or 3% of their total number, including budgets of three regions (Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk and Kyiv), 21 cities of regional importance and 32 districts. All budgets in Kyiv region have been approved.