Conference “Towards and Open and Evidence-Based Land Reform”

On 4 December 2017, the Conference “Towards and Open and Evidence-Based Land Reform” was held in Kyiv. It is one of the most representational events dedicated to land reform in Ukraine.

PROGRAM

Its participants included the officials (the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food; the Ministry of Finance; the Ministry of Justice; the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography, and Cadastre; the National Bank of Ukraine), people’s deputies – members of the Parliament’s Committee for Agrarian Policy and Land Governance; the Ombudsman and the Business Ombudsman councils; experts in land reform; agricultural producer association; top directors of the World Bank, the IMF, and the IFC; representatives of the EU, the EBRD, and the USAID; technical assistance projects. In particular, David MICHAUD, Head of the World Bank’s Water Global Practice; Gosta LJUNGMAN, the IMF Resident Representative in Ukraine; Olena VOLOSHYNA, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Country Manager for Ukraine; Olena SUKMANOVA, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine for State Registration; Leonid KOZACHENKO and Vadym IVCHENKO, people’s deputies of Ukraine.

The Conference aims to maintain political dialogue, based on analytic evidence and practical experience, among all the reform stakeholders and evaluate the current state of preparation for the reform implementation in several key segments.

Thus, the Conference presented the Government’s position, to be reflected in the draft Law on the Turnover of Agricultural Land, and the plan of further actions for implementation of land reform. The Agenda offered a discussion “The impact of land reform on agricultural investments and development”, the sections “The government’s actions to establish the preconditions for a transparent and fair land market: key directions”, “The protection of land rights”, “Access to land finance”, and “Ensuring transparent and efficient use of state land”.

The Conference was organized by the World Bank’s project “Capacity Development for Evidence-Based Land & Agricultural Policy Making” with the participation of the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, the National Bank of Ukraine, people’s deputies and other active participants of the land reform process.

“The Conference has presented a system-based approach towards land reform. As this concerns not only “the model of the land market”, but also the protection of land owners’ property rights, crediting mechanisms based on using land as a collateral, the transparency of state land governance, and many other issues. These issues were explored by the Project, and a number of effective professional discussions in expert environment, farmers’ associations and state stakeholders took place in the last two years. The latter include not only the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and the StateGeoCadastre, but also the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, the National Bank of Ukraine, the Ombudsman and Business Ombudsman offices, and others. Part of the achieved results is presented at the Conference. We also aim to discuss the land reform using the language of numbers and facts and thus step aside from populism”, said Denys Nizalov, Director of the Project “Capacity Development for Evidence-Based Land & Agricultural Policy Making.”

The high level of the Conference delegates demonstrates the deep interest of the ministries and state agencies in land reform, as well as the recognition of the significance of the reform for the economic growth of Ukraine on the part of international organizations and their readiness to provide assistance in its implementation.