As part of the reform of the customs sector in Ukraine, the number of customs offices will be reduced to 16, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
This was announced by the Chairman of the State Customs Service of Ukraine Maxim Nefedov on Facebook.
“The next step in creating a new customs office is today the Cabinet of Ministers approved the regional structure. Instead of 26 customs offices there will be 16, and the laboratory and canine center will also remain separate (there is a question of accreditation and certification, so it is very difficult to merge them),” he commented on the government’s decision.
According to Nefedov, these changes are needed for several things.
“The beginning of the fight against “feudalism,” when each customs office is a separate principality, with its own rules, relying on local heads of regional state administration, police officer, prosecutor, SBU officer, State Bureau of Investigation, etc.; savings on administrative costs - we will redistribute positions in favor of operational staff, we will begin to learn to centralize all support functions; logistics optimization - for a significant number of customs posts, the distance to the center will be reduced, the creation of a Coordination and Monitoring Customs Office, where we will begin to accumulate experience and supervision functions, create centers of competence for complex and risky groups of goods, monitoring groups for analyzing data on borders, viewing information from cameras , scales, scanners, etc.,” said the head of the customs service.
According to him, this is an intermediate structure on which the stages of the path “that will have to be taken next year to transition to a single legal entity” will be worked out.
“The next steps are the appointment of an acting heads of customs, registration of legal entities, the beginning of the transfer of people in the regions,” Nefedov noted.