Customs Chief Selection Process Launched in Ukraine

Ukraine’s government has formed a selection committee to select the Head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine, as it initiates the long-debated need to reform the customs service and secure foreign funding undertakings. 

The Ukrainian government is seeking ways to reform the customs service which was found to be corrupt according to investigations by Ukraine’s media outlets Ukrainska Pravda and Bihus.Info. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) required Ukraine to launch the reform, eliminate vested interests and adhere to European standards for customs operations. 

Ukraine had already submitted a medium-term action plan for implementing customs reform and is now launching a transparent competition to select a new head, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko. 

“Today, at a Cabinet meeting, we initiated an open competition to select the Head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine. This is an important step in rebooting the customs authority, which must become an efficient and transparent body operating according to European standards,” Svyrydenko wrote in her blog on Telegram on Monday. 

The selection committee will consist of three Ukrainian and three in-country based foreign international experts in the field in order to balance the view of candidates, she wrote. 

Ukraine is represented by Andriy Yerashov, Head of the Analytical Centre at the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs (SUP); Dmytro Oliynyk, Chairman of the Council of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine; Oleh Tymkiv, Business Development Director at the audit firm Moore Stephens.

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Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar announced that Hungary and Ukraine have reached a “comprehensive agreement” to broaden language, cultural, educational and political rights for roughly 100,000 ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region, following several weeks of expert-level talks. Kyiv has pledged to write the agreed measures into Ukrainian law, reflecting them in the EU accession action plan. Budapest indicated it would support opening the first negotiating cluster for Ukraine.

International partners are represented by Arūnas Adomenas, Lithuania’s Customs Attaché to the EU, expert in customs policy and international cooperation; David Bernstein, expert in governance and institutional reforms; Kunio Mikuriya, international expert in customs policy, trade facilitation and organizational leadership.

The IMF insisted on a plan to reform customs, setting it as a priority action to unlock the ninth review under Ukraine’s 48-month $15.5 billion Extraordinary Fund Facility Program which the IMF approved in March 2023, having already disbursed $10.6 billion. 

Svyrydenko is likely to seek more IMF financing since Ukraine’s has to maintain defense spending levels as Russia’s full-scale invasion drags on into its fourth year, although economists previously assumed hostilities would end in 2025. 

As Ukraine is spending the majority of domestic revenues on defending itself against Russia, it will be left with a financing gap of $10-19 billion for social expenditures in 2026 alone, according to various estimates. 

But Ukraine cannot get more cash if it doesn’t complete the required restructuring, according to the “money in exchange for reforms” principle the IMF program is built upon.