KIEV, June 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukrainian economy may shrink by about 5% this year, acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a session of the Verkhovna Rada.

“We predict the economy will shrink by 5%, but everything will depend on what the developments in the south-east of the country,” he said.

He said the government had managed to make a few promising steps recently in order to stabilize the economic situation, but he admitted insufficiency of these steps.

In spite of a drop in imports, the earnings of the Ukrainian customs department have increased on the background of an overall 20% drop in imports, Yatsenyuk said.

“Take the customs offices, for instance,” he said. “The overall revenues of imports have fallen 20% but the revenues of the Customs Service went up 13% if recomputed into US dollars."

Yatsenyuk also informed the MPs on an increase of earnings from excise duties for alcoholic beverages and cigarettes, saying they went up by almost 40% last month.

 

Corruption in Ukraine not eliminated yet

Corruption at the “medium and lower administrative levels” has not been eliminated in Ukraine, Yatsenyuk said.

Yatsenyuk claimed, however, “the goal has been attained in the upper echelons of power and the pyramid of corruption has been destroyed there.”

“But has it been eliminated at the medium and lower (administrative) levels?” he asked. “No, of course not. Extortion of money continues there, and people continue giving bribes, which are accepted.”

Yatsenyuk revealed the government’s efforts to create a national anticorruption bureau that would supervise the anti-corruption campaign.

He also said it was necessary to amend the laws on the police and the prosecution offices.