Since the launch of the land market on July 1 and as of the morning of August 16 in Ukraine, a total of 7,100 transactions of agricultural land purchase for agricultural plots with a total area of 14,830 hectares were held, Poltava and Kharkiv regions are leaders in the number of concluded agreements, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food reported on the website on Friday, August 13.
It is reported that Poltava region is in the lead in terms of the total area of sold land plots with an indicator of 1,740 hectares, followed by Kharkiv (1,710 hectares), Dnipropetrovsk (1,230 hectares), Kirovohrad (1,210 hectares) and Kherson (1,100 hectares) regions.
The Ministry of Agrarian Policy also said that during this period, 5,240 applications for access to the State Land Cadastre for the purpose of online verification of land plots purchase legality were received from notaries. Among them 4,590 applications were agreed, 49 applications are in the queue for consideration, 0,600 applications denied access. In total, there are more than 6,000 notaries in the country.
As reported, the agricultural land market launched in Ukraine as part of the government’s land reform began operating on July 1. At the first stage of the reform, only citizens of the country will be able to buy and sell land plots. One individual will be able to dispose of no more than 100 hectares.
The right to purchase agricultural land on January 1, 2024 will be given to legal entities established in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine, while the final beneficiary of one or more legal entities will be able to consolidate through them a total of not more than 10,000 hectares.
The majority (71.7%) of Ukrainians support the holding of a referendum banning the sale of agricultural land, 65.2% would support a ban on the sale of agricultural land, and 84.1% oppose the sale of Ukrainian agricultural land to foreigners, according to the results of a sociological research conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on June 22-29.
At the same time, 21% of respondents were against holding the corresponding referendum. Some 21.8% of respondents are against the ban on the sale of agricultural land, and 12.1% – the ban on the sale of agricultural land to foreigners.
The majority of respondents – 64% – believe that things in the country are going in the wrong direction. Some 20% of the respondents are optimistic about the direction of the movement of affairs, and another 16% found it difficult or refused to answer the question.
In the course of the study, 2,031 respondents from 107 settlements in all government-controlled regions of Ukraine were interviewed by the method of personal (“face-to-face”) interviews on a three-stage stochastic sample, representative of the population of Ukraine over 18 years old. The statistical error (with a probability of 0.95 and with a design effect of 1.5) does not exceed 3.3% for indicators close to 50%, and 1.5% for indicators close to 5%.
After the transfer to communities of 2 million hectares of land in municipal ownership, 750,000 hectares of state agricultural land will remain in the state geocadastre, Roman Leschenko, the head of the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre, has said.
“In Ukraine, 10.4 million hectares of state-owned agricultural land do not exist … 1.7 million hectares of state-owned land were transferred to municipal ownership in 2018-2019, and today, having signed a historical decree, we are transferring more than 2 million hectares of land to communities … According to the state land cadastre, after the transfer of more than 2 million hectares of land in Ukraine, 750,000 hectares of state-owned agricultural land will remain in the state geocadastre,” he said, speaking at the land forum Land for the People in Chernihiv region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed into law a bill amending a number of Ukrainian legislative acts on the conditions for the turnover of farmland, which the Verkhovna Rada passed on March 31, 2020.
“The document provides for the formation of a legislative framework for introducing market-based turnover of farmland. The law signed by the president will empower citizens to exercise their constitutional rights to freely dispose their property and will provide for transparent terms for acquiring ownership of agricultural plots of land by citizens of Ukraine,” the president’s press service said on Tuesday.
The lifting of the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land is a significant impetus to the development of the economy, farming and the agro-industrial complex.
“The lifting of the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land is a significant impetus for the development of the economy, farming, the agricultural complex in Ukraine,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Telegram.
As reported, on the night of March 31, the Verkhovna Rada at an extraordinary meeting adopted a law on opening the land market from July 1, 2021 with the restriction of its work in the first three years only to land plots owned by individuals with a maximum ownership of 100 hectares per capita.
The parliamentary committee for agricultural and land policy is finalizing the provisions that foreigners would not be able to buy land until the decision to allow this is made at a national referendum, Deputy Head of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, MP Yevheniya Kravchuk has said.. “Today, the meeting of our faction was held with one issue on the agenda – the introduction of the land market. Discussions continue. But not about whether it is needed or not, but about the parameters of the functioning of the market. And that means that we have come very close to the optimal solution that will suit Ukraine most of all. Namely, the committee for agricultural and land policy is finalizing the provisions that foreigners will not be able to buy land until a decision on this is made at a national referendum,” Kravchuk wrote on her official page in the Facebook social network on Monday night.
The MP said that this is about the concentration of no more than 10,000-20,000 hectares of land in the hands of one operator.
“As for the concentration of land in the hands of one operator, the threshold will be significantly reduced. Discussion is about 10,000-20,000 hectares, which is 90% less than what was proposed for first reading,” Kravchuk said.
According to Kravchuk, it is necessary to legislatively limit the possibility of speculation with the resale of land.
“We talked about the need to remove speculation with the resale of land in the first years after the market opened. Special safeguards are introduced for this, because people should not earn from selling land, but from products grown on it,” the MP said.
