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The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has revised and elaborated on the state strategy with regard to the allocation of land plots to the participants of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) held in eastern Ukraine and lifted the relevant restrictions, according to the Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry's press service.
The relevant decision was made at a government meeting on Wednesday, January 17.
"The resolution on amendments to the strategy for the improvement of the management mechanism in the field of use and protection of agricultural land of the state ownership and its disposition stipulates the priority of providing ATO participants with land plots irrespective of their area, lease rights on which were sold," reads the report.
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Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman noted the importance of verifying land recipients in order to prevent manipulating the ATO heroes' status and the use of ATO participants to carry out transactions with the land.
According to Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Maksym Martyniuk, the adoption of a resolution that imposed restrictions was aimed at closing down questionable schemes for the disposal of state-owned land. So, the document complied with its anti-corruption mission.
"But the side effect was the slowdown in the rate of land plots transfer to ATO participants. During the meetings with the ATO veterans' organizations, we developed an appropriate format, namely the introduction of amendments to the resolution that will accelerate the transfer of land," he said.
The ministry noted that over 187,000 applications for obtaining land had been submitted as of January 1, 2018, to the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre since the introduction of the initiative in July 2014.
As a result, land surveyors provided the military with 135,030 permits to develop land management projects for land allocation, which accounted for 72% of the applications submitted. As of January 3, 2018, the servicemen have registered under their ownership 90,378 land plots with an area of 117,280 hectares.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on June 7, 2017, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers ordered the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre to lease out Ukrainian agricultural land solely through auctions. The lease of plots should be short-term, i.e. for no more than seven years. The starting value of land will be set at a level of not less than 8% of its normative monetary assessment.