The government will set up a special interdepartmental division to control the work of the customs service, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said.
“An interdepartmental division will be set up to control the customs (service) and all the others. This will be a hundred of people, who will have all of the technical equipment to show how one needs to work. I will equip them as well as possible,” Groysman said at a meeting at the Krakovets border crossing on the Ukrainian-Polish border on Saturday.
He also informed the leadership of the Ukrainian State Fiscal Service and the chiefs of the customs offices that they have three months to establish order at the Ukrainian customs offices.
“You have three months to establish order at the Ukrainian customs offices. If you have the political will, I support you, if not, write resignation statements already today, otherwise, you will be swept away,” the prime minister said.
The customs service ought to be changed as quickly as possible; and the changes should be the following: a rise in national budget revenues and the honest work of customs officials, he said.
According to the estimates of the government, current revenue reserves of the customs service’s activity can amount to tens of billions of hryvnias annually, Groysman said.
“If doing your work honestly, we will be able to receive extra Hr 50 billion from the customs (service),” he said.
Groysman also said that this has been the looting and a crime to set up ‘black’ and ‘gray’ schemes of smuggling, while the war has been on in the east and people have had no money to buy medicines.
