Plots of land of several thousand hectares at auctions of the Ukrainian Land Bank

Działki po kilka tysięcy hektarów na aukcjach ukraińskiego Banku Ziemi

The Director General of the State Land Bank, Jarosław Jarosławski, announced that the first public land auctions in the online Prozorro system will begin at the turn of August and September this year, reports the AgroPolit portal. The government has transferred 104,000 hectares of land for distribution, which were previously in state offices, institutions and enterprises.

-We will put up about 20 plots in one day. The starting price is from 12% NGO (3-4 thousand UAH), the lease term is 14 years for annual plantations and 25 years for perennials – the head of the Land Bank explained in an interview.

Yaroslavsky also revealed that the largest plot of land put up for auction for lease will have an area of 3,968 hectares and is located in the Kirovohrad region. The second largest is 1,186 hectares, and the third – 1,120 hectares, and both are located in the Mykolaiv region.

New rents for the budget

The Ukrainian government is keen to quickly allocate land, because it means increasing budget revenues. Until now, these state-owned lands were leased to entities that paid very low, and sometimes symbolic, rents. As Yaroslavsky calculates, all state-owned lands currently occupy about 800,000 hectares, and the annual budget losses due to reduced rents will amount to 7-8 billion hryvnia.

Many official tenants illegally sublet land to private companies. The reform is intended to curb corruption and at the same time regulate the land market in Ukraine. The head of the Land Bank announced that a second pool of land for distribution will be created by the end of 2024. It will be about 250,000 hectares.