MPs propose to extend the moratorium on sale of farmland until Janu-ary 1, 2013, the bill No. 9586 reads. It has been submitted to the parliament by leader of the Party of Regions’ faction Oleksandr Yefremov and chairman of the agricultural policy committee Hryhorii Kaletnik. The extension is needed because Verkhovna Rada failed to pass the land market bill on second reading. Meanwhile, some provisions of this latter bill do not sit well with the land market participants. The Day asked the former mi-nister of agrarian policy of Ukraine and current first deputy chairman of the agro-industrial company MHP Yurii Melnyk to evaluate the latest version of the land market bill:
“I always said it and I repeat it now: we need functioning land market, but it needs a market economy environment. We have identified a few provisions which should be amended by lawmakers if they do not want to restrict the free land market. If these restrictions remain, we will have no fully functioning land market.
Our first objection concerns limiting land leasing to no more than 6,000 hectares per district and five percent of farmland per region.
Secondly, we object to creation of the state land bank. The bill provides for the creating of such an entity that will be the sole mortgagee in the country, while lacking adequate infrastructure and money... If the state wants to grant to the 7,000,000 land share holders the full right to dispose of their property, then it would be appropriate to allow all banks to be mortgagees...
Thirdly, I have strong doubts about the ideology behind 100 hectares limit on farmland per owner, with this figure being the maximum for private land ownership. This arbitrary limit is completely unjustified.
Our next point is that we agree with the provision on obligatory spending of one percent [of the company’s total costs. – Author] on the social needs of the region where the company operates. But this provision should go hand in hand with legal guarantees of constant assessed land values for some time, say, five to ten years. It is the assessed land value that determines land share rent rates. Without this, no company will be able to properly plan their business, even for a single year.
And finally, the law should define the maximum term of the farmland lease, because the final provisions of the Land Code abolish the maximum term of the farmland lease and declare that this term is regulated by the special law, but there is no indication on what law is meant there.”
