ForUm | 29 March 2011
First Deputy Head of Presidential Administration Iryna Akimova said that foreign nationals should be eligible for the privatization of agricultural land in Ukraine. She stated this during the Ukrainian Forum, organized by Economist Conferences (The Economist Group).
"From January 1, 2012, the market of agricultural land should be open, and it should be open not only to citizens of Ukraine, but also to foreigners who want to work in this sphere," she said, UKRINFORM reported.
According to Akimova, the necessary legislation for land reform must be adopted in the 1st half of 2011, so that the land market start effectively functioning since 2012.
As reported, the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land in Ukraine has been acting since 2001. President Yanukovych insists that legal market of agricultural land open in 2012.
Previously, deputy head of the State Agency for Land Resources, Mykola Kaliuzhny said the provision on the possibility of buying agricultural land by legal entities was excluded from the draft law on land market. "We have suggested that only Ukrainian citizens could buy land and acquire ownership of it," Kaliuzhny said.
In all, Ukraine has more than 60 million hectares of land, including 41.8 million hectares of arable land, of which 33 million hectares are plowed.
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