IMF OFFERS UKRAINE 1 MLN IN EXCHANGE FOR AGRICULTURAL LAND

Ron van Rooden, the head of IMF mission in Ukraine has urged the state authorities to lift the moratorium on land sales in exchange for a loan of a billion UAH. The moratorium "hinders the development of the agricultural sector in Ukraine," claims the fund's representative. However, it is known that this kind of the IMF's statements are often proceed from interests of large multinational corporations. Taking this into account we could assume, that this offer is nothing else but another exhortation of the government to start a big sale of the Ukrainian land.

Quite possible that an appropriate draft law on the land market has already been developed and just waits for the hour. Clearly, that if the moratorium will be lifted there will be numerous bureaucratic obstacles for Ukrainian farmers to buy a decent plot of fertile chernozem since there is a whole queue of potential buyers among oligarchs-owners of agricultural giants from Russia, US, China, Israel, etc. Even if the land law will include a paragraph, which prohibits to sell agricultural lands to non-residents, it can be easily bypassed by using a front company.

In the case of lifting the moratorium on sale of agricultural land the transnational agricultural companies will plant various genetically modified monocultures like maize or rapeseed, sprinkling fertile Ukrainian soil with all sorts of chemistry,  these oligarchs will get profits by exploiting our land. In addition, large agricultural companies do not require a large number of workers for efficient land cultivation. And therefore this will be not only a blow upon Ukrainian farmers, but also a new catalyst for urbanization process caused by problem of mass unemployment in rural areas.

Taking the above it can be argued that the proposal to lift the moratorium on the sale of Ukrainian land in the terms of today is a direct threat to national security and treason of national interests.  The positive news is that the moratorium was prolonged by the government by 2018 on October 6 by the Verkhovna Rada.