The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc plans to initiate a referendum on extending the moratorium on agricultural land sales. As the leader of this political force Yulia Tymoshenko told the conciliation council, the collection of signatures in support of this idea will start in the near future. In her opinion, the privatization of agricultural land “is a huge fraud that will also deprive Ukraine of a part of its territory.” And now, according to Tymoshenko, agricultural enterprises are faced with such conditions that they will “go bankrupt soon, so that they can’t compete during the land privatization.” Earlier Tymoshenko assessed Ukrainian lands as worth about 400 billion dollars, “according to the most moderate estimates.”
This issue has attracted attention since the question of the land cadaster and a number of bills connected with land privatization were included in the parliament’s agenda for this week.
However, the Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food Mykola Prysiazhniuk does not see any reasons to hold such a referendum. “I would hold a referendum on land issues before land distribution. What is the sense of holding a re-ferendum on the issue of the land market of the entire Ukrainian nation today? We already made a step, distributed land, gave people ownership rights, and today no referendum is needed: it is the right of the farmer to sell the land to the state or keep it,” he explained. In the minister’s opinion, today it is much more important to solve the issue of the circulation of agricultural land without raider attacks, keep the balance of agricultural goods production and undertake responsibility for completing land reform, which has been “much delayed.”
COMMENTARIES
Alex LISSITSA, president of the association Ukrainian Agribusiness Club:
“The agrarian sector needs the introduction of a land market badly. Everyone understands this very well. The only question is when and how they will do it. While speaking with many farmers from different regions, I feel their agitation. They do not understand when [the market for land] will be opened, how much it will cost, who will have the right to buy it. Due to this, they are not going to invest much money in the fall sowing campaign, since they do not know whether this land will be their property. One wants to use this uncertainty now. In my opinion, today there are no reasons to hold a land referendum. It will only delay the implementation of land reforms and aggravate the politicization of this market, which is absolutely unnecessary for the agrarian sector.”
Arkadii KORNATSKY, chairman of the NGO Peasant Front:
“I don’t see any reasons for holding a land referendum and I am sure it will not be held. All these statements are simply talk and PR. Ukraine doesn’t need a referendum, it needs a free land market. If even the referendum does take place, villagers owning land would vote one hundred percent for a high price for their land and the revival of villages, that is for a free land market and foreign buyers who will pay the villagers much more than domestic investors. It would only be necessary to formulate the questions of the referendum in a transparent way.”
Oleksandr YAROSLAVSKY, deputy director general of the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation:
“A referendum is one, but not the only, instrument to determine public opinion. Recently, in the course of a parliamentary hearing on the land issue most participants expressed a negative attitude toward lifting the moratorium. So there is one assessment already. If the land referendum is held, it should concern only those citizens who own this land. However, whatever version the politicians stick to eventually, one should remember that the parliament didn’t extend the land moratorium, and in early 2012, one will be allowed to sell agricultural land. Therefore it is now necessary to think about how to launch this market correctly. Because if many land plots are ‘thrown’ on the market at once, their price will decrease considerably. Besides, after lifting the moratorium the agricultural goods production processes and market will be destabilized. It is possible that raider attacks on lease rights will be undertaken.”
