Agricultural land prices rise 20% in Ukraine this year - Agrarian Policy Ministry

MOSCOW. May 11 (Interfax) - The price of purchase and sale of agricultural land in Ukraine soared by an average of 20% between January and April 2023, and there have been 13,000 such transactions since the beginning of the year, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy for Digitalization Denis Bashlyk said.

"Even if you remove the factor of inflation, we see that the growth [of prices] continues," the Ukrainian media quoted the deputy minister as saying at a press conference.

The deputy minister noted that the average cost of one hectare of agricultural land in the Lvov region was 162,000 UAH in early May of his year while at the opening of the market it was 51,000 UAH. The price rose from 48,000 UAH to 148,000 UAH per hectare in the Kiev region over that time, he said.

At the same time, one hectare of land in the Chernigov region costs 23,000 UAH on average, while before the crisis it used to cost between 16,000 and 17,000 UAH, Bashlyk added, suggesting that the price hikes are linked to inflation.

"There were 66,000 land sale and purchase deals for a total area of 153,000 ha in Ukraine in 2021. There were 53,000 such deals in 2022, while the market has actually not been operating for almost six months due to restrictions imposed on access to registries," the deputy minister also said.

ProZorro.Selling CEO Sergei But said that since the launching of electronic land auctions in October 2021 the auctions for the purchase and rent of agricultural land for over 1.2 billion UAH have already been completed in the ProZorro.Selling system.

As reported, the market of agricultural land in Ukraine began to operate on July 1, 2021. At the first stage of the reform, only Ukrainian citizens obtained the right to buy and sell agricultural land, and one individual will be able to possess no more than 100 hectares.

The right to purchase agricultural land will be granted from January 1, 2024 to legal entities set up under the Ukrainian law, and the ultimate beneficiary of one or more legal entities will be able to consolidate through them a total of not more than 10,000 hectares.