105,000 contracts signed since beginning of land reform — Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry

July 1 marks one year since the Ukrainian land market opened. The reform returned to citizens the ownership rights to their own land, and the management of the land shifted back to the communities.

Mykola Solskyy, Minister of the Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine spoke about it at Media Center Ukraine — Ukrinform.

“The results of this reform are very important. The first thing to say is that the start of the land reform destroyed all the myths about the land reform. The land reform has been launched, it is free of corruption, and it works in a somewhat simplified version. The only negative comments are related to the technical design, but work on it continues. We work according to the rules of the market economy,” — the minister emphasized.

Markiian Dmytrasevych, Deputy Minister of the Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, said that the land reform was introduced with a single goal — for the land to get its rightful owner, so that every Ukrainian could feel free on their own land.

“Own your own land is the slogan of the entire reform. It also concerns the attitude of Ukrainians to their own land. More than 105,000 contracts were signed within the year of the land market’s work. It’s not just about buying and selling, it’s also about (land) gifts and keeping it for life. As of the beginning of russia’s full-scale invasion, 102,000 agreements were signed and about 252 hectares of land plots were acquired, while the total amount of land (that can be bought in Ukraine) is about 32 million hectares. We understand that the reform took place in a restrained manner. The average price per hectare is about UAH 37,000. And this is 30% more than the starting price for the land,” — Markiian Dmytrasevych said.

Land reform also stimulates lending secured by land. Currently, the land market is already recovering, although since the beginning of the invasion, the market has somewhat stopped its work.

“We are also recording losses from the military aggression, landowners’ losses in profits amount to about UAH 4.3 billion. This is connected to the mining of the territory, and the destruction of fields,” — the deputy minister said.

Denys Bashlyk, Deputy Minister of the Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine in charge of digital development, digital transformations, and digitalization, said that right before the land market opened there had been many myths in the society, the most common one was that foreigners would buy all the land.

“The land market in Ukraine is unique, we could not take one of the already known models. While the moratorium was in effect, certain peculiarities of land relations were formed, which had to be regulated, and we managed to do so. There were certain technical problems, but they are being solved via digitalization. Land relations have become more transparent than they used to be. For example, everyone can view the amount and location of the sold land,” — he noted.

According to Denys Bashlyk, even under martial law, it was possible to restore the work of the land cadastre.

“The next stage in the development of the transparency of the land market was the adoption of the Law on the National Infrastructure of Geospatial Data. In addition data about land plots, data on subsoil and other resources will become open as well. After our victory, access will be unlimited,” — he said.

Currently, 100 communities have already switched to transparent management, and 75 of them have already published data about their territories on open geo-portals.

Read more: https://mediacenter.org.ua/news