Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is forecasting that the amount of revenues that the State Customs Service generates into the state budget will increase by UAH 1 billion or 14.3% to UAH 8 billion in March, compared with February.
Tymoshenko announced this in her introductory address at an expanded meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Tymoshenko said this increase would be made possible by the reintroduction of the program called "Smuggling, Stop!" and the introduction of new operating principles by the customs service.
"[The State Customs Service's Chairman] Valerii Ivanovych Khoroshkovskyi is now absolutely in his place," Tymoshenko said.
In response to criticism by certain economists that the government's operations are resulting in an increase in the country's trade deficit, Tymoshenko said that the increase of the trade deficit was the result of legalization of the existing imports and reduction of the size of the fictitious exports that enabled exporters to claim value-added-tax refunds totaling UAH 4-5 billion per year.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Tymoshenko recently said that the amount of revenues generated into the state budget by the State Customs Service would double to UAH 7.6 billion in February 2008, compared with February 2007.
According to Tymoshenko, the state budget's customs revenues increased by UAH 5.3 billion or 72.9% to UAH 12.6 billion in the January-February period of this year.
At the time, she expressed confidence that the pace of increase of the state budget's customs revenues would be preserved, thus allowing the revenues to reach UAH 10 billion per month.
Press conference with Situations Modeling Agency entitled "Earlier Kharkiv elections: possible consequences and prospects for participants of electoral process"
