Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk has expressed confidence in the new head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine Maksym Nefyodov and believes that it is possible to eliminate smuggling by the end of 2019.
“Smuggling is also a story that we must win this year. There is Maksym Nefyodov. I trust him very much and I believe that he is a very strong manager, an honest person. And I really hope that this year smuggling as a systemic phenomenon will be a thing of the past,” Honcharuk said at a meeting with reporters in Kyiv on Friday.
He said that for this, Ukraine has everything that is needed, and it takes only a few months to debug the system.
“There is everything for this. There is an SBU, there is a border guard service with a new manager, there is Maksym Nefyodov at customs. He needs a couple of months to make the system manageable, because now it is more like a” brain without arms and legs,” the prime minister said.
At the same time, he said that it takes time to build such a large state machine, but in any case it should begin to function fully and this should be done before the end of the year.
“According to various estimates, the volume of smuggling is estimated at billions of dollars,” Honcharuk said.
According to him, the victory over smuggling will also help to attract additional resources to the budget, which will help the government in fulfilling the president’s mission to “cope with poverty.”
