Outdated land lease agreements are depriving Ukrainian communities of revenue, resulting in an annual loss of $64.5 million.

The opportunities for financial growth in communities are literally at their feet – in their land, especially agricultural land. This was highlighted by the Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policy and Digital Development of Ukraine, Denis Bashlyk. In a blog post for Liga.net, he mentioned that land revenues are already playing a significant role in the budgets of many territorial communities.

Subscribe to our Viber: news, humor, and entertainment!

Since 2021, the leasing of communal lands has only been conducted through Prozorro.Sales – electronic auctions that have made the process more transparent and profitable. Since then, nearly 80 thousand hectares have been leased, bringing communities 674.8 million UAH annually.

In the past year, community revenues from agricultural land have increased by 15%, and land now accounts for 14% of all tax revenues.

"There is a bit of a downside – this figure could be even higher," says Bashlyk. "However, most of the community revenues from leasing agricultural land still come from contracts that were signed either under the old offline auction procedure or through direct agreements. In other words, if all communal land leased since 2015 had gone through Prozorro. Sales, communities would have received an additional $64.5 million in their budgets annually."

The Deputy Minister also pointed out other opportunities for increasing revenues: from more active registration of plots in the cadastre (which could bring up to 10 billion UAH) to the "formalization" of land through the State Agricultural Register, where about 3.36 million hectares have already been removed from the shadow economy.

He specifically emphasized the importance of humanitarian demining – to restore safe land use in areas contaminated with explosive objects, particularly in regions affected by the war.

"This is a field for communities to consider, as these funds are for restoration, new shelters, kindergartens, schools, and hospitals, street lighting," Bashlyk concluded.