By KYIV. Aug 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) – President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law on the elimination of shadow schemes in the use of state-owned farmland, Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a member of the Holos parliamentary faction, said.
“And yet (bill) No. 7588 on the elimination of shadow schemes in the use of state-owned farmland has also been signed,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, adding that this is “another one less scheme that” fed “whole generations of politicians and law enforcement officers.”
Zhelezniak said the signed law is “on the transparent management of lands, including such a corrupt institution as the agrarian academy.”
According to an explanatory note to the bill, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on July 27 at the final reading, the efficiency of the use of state-owned farmland is unsatisfactory. According to the results of 2020, the revenue of state-owned enterprises in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector was only 3.3% of the total revenue of public sector enterprises, while about 3.2 million hectares of agricultural land, or about 7.5% of total area of agricultural land plots in Ukraine.
To eliminate such inefficiency in land use by state-owned enterprises, bill No. 7588 gives green light to the transformation of state-owned commercial enterprises, in which permanent use are agricultural land plots with a total area of at least 100 hectares, into LLCs with the subsequent transfer of the corresponding land plots to them for rent.
Such a measure, according to the authors of the bill, will help avoid the illegal lease of state-owned land by other legal entities that do not pay taxes on such contracts.
To combat the sublease of state-owned land, the bill establishes a ban on transferring land plots of state and municipal ownership for permanent use to commercial agricultural production.
In addition, the document grants the Cabinet of Ministers the right to determine and decide on the transfer of integral property complexes of state enterprises, institutions, organizations that own the right to permanent use of agricultural land plots; determines the procedure for re-registration of the right to permanent use of land plots of a state-owned enterprise, which turns into a legal entity of a different organizational and legal form, into the right to lease a land plot for a period of 50 years.
The law allows the introduction of other legal entities into the sublease of state-owned land only after land auctions.
It also determines the procedure for re-registration of the right of lifetime inheritable possession of land, the right to permanent use of a land plot for the right to lease land or buy out such land plots.
The bill’s authors are Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, heads of the agrarian and economic parliamentary committees Oleksandr Haidu and Dmytro Natalukha.
