Photo from UNIAN
The president says the state leases its land plots out at rates that are twice the rate paid to rural residents who own farmland.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says rent for the use of agricultural land in Ukraine may grow five times due to proper reforms.
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"We need to raise land rents. In order to raise the living standards. [Ukrainian] citizens, holders of shares, lease land plots at EUR 52 per hectare, on the average. This is simply an unrealistic price of land lease in Europe. In Lithuania, it is EUR 81. Why don't we pay the rural residents their honest rental price?" the presidential press service quoted Poroshenko as saying at a meeting with students and professors of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine on March 25.
The president says that the situation is paradoxical. Now the state leases its land plots out at rates that are twice the rate paid to rural residents. In 2017, the strategy of efficient management of state agricultural land resources was adopted and the lease of state agricultural land should be carried out only through open auctions with standard starting conditions, he recalled.
"We must extend these standards and requirements to the land owned by farmers. Only open auctions with standard starting conditions can abolish the domination of major tenants. Due to the proper reforms, we can increase the cost of land lease in Ukraine five times," he added.
As UNIAN reported earlier, according to the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre, the rate on state-owned agricultural land lease in 2018 grew by a quarter, up to UAH 3,400 (US$126) per ha.