In Ukraine, approximately 4 million hectares of agricultural land are being cultivated without proper legal registration. According to estimates, the annual losses to the state budget from this practice amount to about 24 billion hryvnias. This figure does not account for potentially unpaid taxes, as well as losses from the sale of agricultural products produced on these lands without official accounting.
This is reported by Finway
“The situation with shadow land use has worsened since 2022 – due to the full-scale war unleashed by Russia, land inspections have effectively been suspended in Ukraine,” noted Deputy Minister of Economy Denys Bashlyk.
Restoring control and digitizing land relations
Currently, the Ministry of Economy, together with the State Geocadastre, is working on implementing measures for the safe restoration of the public cadastral map. The main focus is on restoring effective control over the use of land resources, using a risk-oriented approach. The importance of digitizing all processes in the field of land use is also emphasized to enhance transparency and efficiency in the sector.
Land inventory and auction results
Head of the State Geocadastre Dmytro Makarenko reported that since the beginning of the year, an inventory of about 150 thousand hectares of land has already been conducted out of the planned 198 thousand. Currently, the state land cadastre is filled to 76%, with agricultural plots fully inventoried. The lands that remain unregistered in the cadastre mainly include water, nature reserve fund lands, as well as parks and forests.
The state is also actively leasing agricultural lands through open auctions. Just last week, ten such auctions took place, with a total contract value of 52.3 million hryvnias. The average sublease cost for one hectare was 30,700 hryvnias. Additionally, the winners of the tenders are required to pay 8.6 million hryvnias in VAT, and the overall economic effect from these auctions is estimated at 51.7 million hryvnias.