The parliamentary majority of 259 deputies supported the bill with a needed minimum of 226.
The land market in Ukraine will be launched on July 1, 2021. According to the passed law, until January 1, 2024, only Ukrainians will be able to buy farm land. As for foreigners, they will be given access to purchases of Ukrainian agricultural land only after a national referendum that has to make a relevant decision. The State-owned and municipal land of agricultural use will not be put on sale.
Within the first two years since the launching of land reform, a physical person of Ukrainian origin should own a land plot of no more than 100 hectares. And from January 1, 2024, Ukrainian legal entities will have the right to accumulate in their property no more than 10 thousand hectares. Land can be bought only with a non-cash payment.
Banks cannot buy and own land plots but can take them only to recover a debt. And within the next two years, the ownership of such land plots should be alienated from banks at sales.
Legal entities whose participants are citizens of Russia as well as physical persons who are under sanctions have no right to buy land even after a nationwide referendum. Foreign citizens are forbidden to purchase land within a 50-kilometer zone from the State border of Ukraine regardless of a decision that a national referendum can make. The selling price of an agricultural land plot cannot be lower than its estimated value. This norm of the law will be in force until January 1, 2030.
A day before, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine approved the first reading of the draft law "On Amendments to Some Legislative Acts of Ukraine on the Improvement of Mechanisms Regulating the Banking System".
Under the bill, nationalized banks are prohibited from being returned to their previous owners. It is also not allowed to put on the market bankrupt banks whose owners have been able to secure the judicial settlement to revoke the decision of the National Bank on the insolvency of their banks.
However, compensations for damages or lost profits are possible for the former owners of such banks, the nationalization or liquidation of which has been declared illegal.
So, Ukrainian legislators have fulfilled, not without pressure from the President, two basic conditions needed to continue cooperation with international creditors, particularly with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Since it is impossible today to get necessary financing at the world markets because of the current economic crisis, Ukraine badly needs the Fund’s support.
On March 26, Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of International Monetary Fund, confirmed that financing for Ukraine would be doubled provided that two key conditions are fulfilled. She made the following statement on Ukraine:
“This last week, very good progress has been made in the discussions with the Ukrainian authorities on the new Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement. Adoption of legislation to improve the bank resolution framework and on land reform would allow moving forward quickly with finalizing the parameters of the new arrangement, with larger access than previously envisaged.”
The Fund’s financial arrangement is planned to be increased from 5.5 to 10 billion dollars.
Besides, according to the World Bank’s estimation, the opening of land market will bring to Ukrainian economy from 700 million to 1.5 billion dollars additionally.
The newspaper Holos Ukrainy
