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According to the party leader, at the moment the team is working on a legislative basis for opening the land market.
Leader of the Servant of the People Party Dmytro Razumkov says the agricultural land market may be introduced in Ukraine within a year.
"The land market will need to be opened. The moratorium is imposed year after year because it is profitable to someone. Land owners should be able to use it. A legal framework will appear soon. Our team is now working on it. On the one hand, it is necessary to protect national interests, while on the other to protect those of [land] owners," he told the Ukrainian news outlet Strana.ua on June 12.
When asked what timeframe the party sets for abolishing the moratorium, he said: "In my opinion, this is a year."
At the same time, Razumkov stressed that Ukraine had not carried out a quality audit of farmlands.
"We still don't aware of land owners and the land area. This also refers to state-owned land," he added.
Read alsoWorld Bank: Launch of Ukraine's farmland market to allow up to 1.5% economic growth annually
As was reported, on January 18, 2001, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, passed bill No. 2242-III, which established that, temporarily and until the Land Code is adopted, the owners of land shares shall not sell, donate or otherwise alienate land plots. However, they are entitled to bequeath, as well as sell for state and public needs.
The Land Code No. 2768-III was backed by Parliament on October 25, 2001. According to the document, farm land and land shares shall not be sold or otherwise alienated until January 2005, while exchanging, bequeathing, and withdrawing land for public needs are allowed.
Since then, it has been called a moratorium on the sale of agricultural land, which was extended 10 times (in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018).
In 2018, the Parliament extended the ban on the sale of agricultural land until January 1, 2020. The lawmakers instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to draft a bill on the agricultural land turnover and submit it for consideration to the Verkhovna Rada before March 1, 2019, but the government failed to do this.