diff --git a/Lib/distutils/ccompiler.py b/Lib/distutils/ccompiler.py
index 7076b933946..4907a0aa5ad 100644
--- a/Lib/distutils/ccompiler.py
+++ b/Lib/distutils/ccompiler.py
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@ from distutils.dir_util import mkpath
 from distutils.dep_util import newer_group
 from distutils.util import split_quoted, execute
 from distutils import log
+# following import is for backward compatibility
+from distutils.sysconfig import customize_compiler
 
 class CCompiler:
     """Abstract base class to define the interface that must be implemented
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 0fe7c9a017d..1a91e8fca72 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -203,6 +203,9 @@ Library
   stream or a decoder produces data of an unexpected type (i.e. when
   io.TextIOWrapper initialized with text stream or use bytes-to-bytes codec).
 
+- Issue #13994: Add compatibility alias in distutils.ccompiler for
+  distutils.sysconfig.customize_compiler.
+
 - Issue #15633: httplib.HTTPResponse is now mark closed when the server
   sends less than the advertised Content-Length.