Pension and land reforms are the two questions on the agenda, without resolving which the Ukrainian government can forget about further loans from the International Monetary Funds.
To be more specific, according to the memorandum signed between Ukraine and the IMF, the Ukrainian parliament is obliged to pass a bill related to a new land reform by the end of May. Still, given all the buzz around the bill, experts say that the bill is unlikely to be passed at the end of the day. The thing is that the new reform is expected to allow buying agricultural land in big amounts. While the current law bans any purchases of agricultural land, the new law is expected to cancel the ban and allow companies and entrepreneurs to buy up to 200 hectares of agricultural land.
This limitation is required to prevent big businesses from loading up on land in excessive amounts. There some other limitations in the bill. For instance, selling agricultural land to foreigners is forbidden. The only way to get the land for them is to inherit it. On top of that, no agricultural land can be included in a legal entity’s authorized capital. Apparently, by doing so, the parliament wants to save local businesses since otherwise big-scale foreign companies would start buying land together with the local companies owning it. Once again, you cannot own more than 200 hectares of agricultural land, excluding inherited land.
