MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. Ukraine will have to increase the domestic public debt by $5.27 bln to cover defense costs until the end of 2024, Roksolana Pidlasa, head of the budget committee of the Verkhovna Rada announced.

Earlier, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal said that Kiev faced a critical need to find an additional 500 billion hryvnia (about $12.2 billion) for defense needs by the end of the year.

As Pidlasa noted, the preparation of the relevant amendments to the budget was greatly influenced by the Rada's decision not to support the government's package of tax amendments, which would have attracted additional 125 billion hryvnia ($3.1 billion) to the budget, and to reduce it to 30 billion hryvnia ($0.7 billion). This required rebalancing the budget again.

"This is not the best solution, but we are working with what we have. The financing of servicing the public debt is being cut by 115 billion hryvnia ($2.8 billion - TASS). We plan to attract 216 billion hryvnia ($5.27 billion - TASS) on the domestic borrowing market and another 100 billion hryvnia ($2.44 billion - TASS) - to receive from overfulfilling the plan for taxes and fees," she said on the air of the Ukrainian telethon.

Pidlasa explained that overfulfilling the plan for taxes actually implies a recalculation of revenues from the military tax, which were intended for the development of the Ukrainian defense industry sector, but will now go to the immediate needs of the Defense Ministry.

According to Ukrainian Finance Ministry, the country's public debt at the end of the second quarter totaled $155.36 billion.