The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU) has called on the National Agrarian Academy of Sciences (NAAS) to be transparent and engage in dialogue and insists on providing information on 1736 land plots with a total area of 135,000 hectares and their actual use for scientific purposes, the agency reported on Facebook.
“There is no “seizure” of land. We are talking only about the transfer of part of the land that is not used or is used inefficiently to the state enterprise “Reserve” for transparent management. These lands are not being sold, privatized or withdrawn from state ownership,” the SPF emphasized.
At the same time, the Fund reminded that the State Enterprise “Reserve” is the second operator of the Land Bank project, which was created to effectively transfer state land for use on a competitive basis through the Prozorro.Sale system. Its creation is envisaged by the state strategy, as the State Land Bank LLC cannot obtain such land for permanent use – according to the law, only a state-owned enterprise can do so. In the future, the State Enterprise “Reserve” will be merged with similar structures into a single state land bank.
The SPF noted that they do not intend to withdraw land plots from the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences that are actually used for field research, breeding, livestock production or training. It is also not about land plots owned by educational institutions, but only about land used by the National Academy of Sciences, but without confirmation of their scientific purpose.
The SPF emphasized that productivity does not mean hectares, but results, and cited as an example the UAH 3.4 billion received by the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences in 2024 from 276 thousand hectares of land used by the academy.
“This is several times lower than the indicators of an efficient private sector. At the same time, most of the profits are generated not through science, but through commercial farming, which sometimes has nothing to do with research,” the State Property Fund emphasized.
He reminded that land is a national resource and it should work in the interests of the state, especially in times of war when the budget needs financial revenues.
“We cannot afford to keep thousands of hectares for ‘scientific needs’ that are not supported by objective activity,” the SPF emphasized and called on the National Academy of Sciences to be transparent and engage in dialogue.
The SPF analyzed the NAAS lands and identified 1736 plots with a total area of 135 thousand hectares for transfer to the Land Bank. Another 69 thousand hectares have real estate or are unsuitable for investment. This data was submitted to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences in May 2024 for clarification. However, in 10 months, only one response was received from the NAAS – on the transfer of 65 thousand hectares, of which 50 thousand hectares are under occupation, and 7 thousand hectares are actually suitable.
Due to the NAAS’s refusal to cooperate constructively, the SPF decided to include all plots without real estate in the Land Bank project to stop the shadow use of land that does not benefit the state. The NAAS should provide a clear and reasoned list of enterprises and plots that they really need. The Foundation called the NAAS’s opposition an attempt to maintain control over abandoned assets under the slogan “science and development.”
“Our goal is to make state land a source of budget revenues, job creation, support for the army and reforms. We are building a new institution for managing Ukraine’s strategic resources – orderly, accountable and open,” the SPF summarized and called on the National Academy of Sciences to share this state approach.
