January 16 2008, 09:59

Rada refused extending "land" moratorium

Verkhovna Rada declined the proposal to extend the moratorium for the sales of agricultural lands till 2011. One hundred seventy seven deputies out of the required 226 deputies voted for the adoption of the relevant draft law on the 15th of January, "Ukrainian News" informs.

This draft law was introduced by Petr Simonenko, Alexander Tkachenko and Vladimir Matveyev, the deputies of the parliamentary group of Communist party.

The draft law proposed to permit the sales of agricultural lands starting from January 1st 2011 if the law about state land registry and the law about land market have been adopted by that moment.

This document also proposed to extend the term of the prohibited enrollment of the entitlement for the land plot to the authorized funds of the farm communities for the period 2008 till 2011.

The memo to the draft law says, these actions are necessary, because the land legislation has been limited till the present moment. Some draft laws have not been developed yet - they are required to the regulation of land related activities.

Also, as of today, the law about state land registry and the law about land market, the law about the registration of land plots have not been adopted; also, the trustworthy information about the land quality is absent.

We'd like to remind that the President Victor Yuschenko considers the moratorium for the sales of agricultural land to be the reason of corruption on land market.

The President Victor Yuschenko intends to compel the withdrawal of the moratorium for the sales of agricultural lands starting from January 1st or July 1st 2008.

Mr. Yuschenko closes out the possibility that the land moratorium is in effect in 2008; the Rada extended the moratorium in 2007 by means of passage over the presidential veto.