The creation of the customs service as a separate executive-branch agency proposed by a group of lawmakers from the coalition would be a mistake and it would worsen the service for taxpayers and result in the losses of the budget, Finance Minister of Ukraine Natalie Jaresko has said.

"The integration [of the customs and tax services] as one agency would allow providing the better assessment of risks for all taxes and duties and synchronously tracking actions of taxpayers… it would be able to remove doubled functions, cut the number of staff, make the system clearer, create the single window for paying taxes and duties," the minister said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Jaresko said that before December 2012, the State Customs Service was a separate agency, although it failed to cope with the tasks which the authors of bill No. 3763 on the National Customs Service highlight as a reason for separating the service.

She said that the systemic reform of the fiscal agency agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is being conducted to increase the efficiency of the operation of the customs service as part of the State Fiscal Service and reduce corruption risks as much as possible.

As reported, the draft law on the National Customs Service was registered in the Verkhovna Rada on January 13 by MPs from all four factions of the coalition, as well as head of the Radical Party faction Oleh Liashko, and the member of the faction, the head of the committee on industrial policy and entrepreneurship, Viktor Halasiuk.

Viktor Yanukovych in December 2012 created the Income and Tax Ministry on the basis of the State Tax Service and the State Customs Service. Head of the State Tax Service Oleksandr Klymenko was appointed Income and Tax Minister.

After the revolution of dignity the new government at the beginning of March 2014 made the decision to liquidate the Income and Tax Ministry and set up the State Fiscal Service on its base, subordinate to the Ministry of Finance.