OREANDA-NEWS. June 28, 2010. President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych believes that execution of the state budget is one of the main challenges customs officers are facing, he said today during celebrations on the occasion of the Customs Service Day.

To achieve this, said President Yanukovych, Customs Service officers must primarily focus on fighting shady external economic transactions and pseudo-export operations, establishing effective control over declaration of goods, combating smuggling, etc.

According to the President, this work can be effective only under condition of close cooperation with law enforcement and other government agencies. "Only the joint systematic work will ensure adequate performance and quality in detection, investigation and prevention of customs offenses," he said.

Viktor Yanukovych said that Ukraine’s aspiration to sign the Association and Free Trade Area Agreements with the EU remains unchanged and reminded that in this regard customs officers would face new additional challenges.

"We must complete harmonization of our customs legislation with the EU requirements, accomplish implementation of modern Harmonized Description and Coding System, introduce new technologies and procedures of customs control, etc," said Viktor Yanukovych.

He also stressed that it is important to speed up construction of new and reconstruction of old border checkpoints within the framework of preparation to EURO 2012 in order to make them comply with international standards of customs control.

"I am sure that all those present in this hall understand the need to improve customs procedures to bring them on a par with the best European standards," he said.

Another urgent issue according to President Yanukovych is to raise professionalism of customs personnel. “The officers responsible for unprofessional performance of duties, negligent attitude to the case or poor performance at work must be made liable to punishment," he said.

"Your duty is to do honest and conscientious job at your direction, to improve the image of the Customs Service with high moral character and professionalism and to gain public trust to Ukrainian customs officers," he said.