Translated material
Homeland won't be traded for another year
The Ukrainian parliament has banned the sale of farmland
Yesterday, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine overcame President Viktor Yushchenko's veto on a moratorium on the sale of agricultural land until 2008. There were 367 votes to override the veto, with 300 required. The price of the issue is $60 billion (300 billion hryvnia); experts estimate this amount to be 33 million hectares of arable land in the Ukrainian land fund. The Rada, fearing mass abuses, rejected Yushchenko's proposal to allow trade in “people's goods” from January 1, 2007. Overcoming the presidential veto imposed on January 3 became possible thanks to the fact that the ruling Anti-Crisis Coalition was supported by the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.Rada Speaker Alexander Moroz said that society is not ready for the lifting of the land moratorium. The country does not have key laws on the state land cadastre and on the land market; in these conditions, the lifting of the moratorium could lead to the criminalization of the land market and the robbery of the peasantry. In 2007, the Rada will adopt all the necessary laws, and “since 2008, civilized market circulation of land will begin,” promised Raisa Bogatyreva, coordinator of the ruling Anti-Crisis Coalition. The government of Viktor Yanukovych is in solidarity with the parliament, obliging local authorities not to allow notarized registration of documents on the sale of land.
Viktor Yushchenko fears that the moratorium may drag on for several more years, since there is no guarantee that the Rada will pass all the necessary laws before the beginning of 2008. The current land moratorium is the third in a row. The free sale of land in Ukraine was supposed to begin in 2004, but the Rada introduced a moratorium, first until January 1, 2005, then until January 1, 2007. However, the lack of a legal market has given rise to shadow schemes for buying land.
“For business, land remains the only untapped resource,” Ukrainian political scientist Andrei Ermolaev told Vremya Novostey. But he believes that the president’s attempt to lift the moratorium on the sale of land was “nothing more than a political technology trick,” since the country does not yet have a legal basis for a free land market: “The president took a pause so that parliament could use 2007 to prepare appropriate market procedures.” Ukraine's entry into the WTO, expected in 2007-2008, will “push up the development of the land market.”