On the open land market, foreign moneybags will crush Ukrainian villagers
Ukrainian lands are a very attractive asset for international corporations, and they have the money to completely buy them up, which will lead to catastrophic consequences for the villagers and the entire economy of Ukraine.
Deputy Director of the National Scientific Center for Agrarian Economics Vitaly Sabluk stated this on Ukrlife.TV, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“There is no economic sense for international capital to get involved in the agriculture of developed countries and to displace family-self-employed forms of farming.
With us it’s the other way around: family-self-employed people are outside taxes, outside the official organized market, and they cannot compete. And taxation is three to four times more preferential compared to France or Germany, or any European country.
15 percent taxation of profits on such black soils is a very tasty condition. As soon as international capital senses profit, it breaks boundaries and subjugates the government.
If we even take the market valuation of all Ukrainian land and compare it, say, with the capitalization of some of the world's largest companies, then the market valuation and market value of all Ukrainian land will be less than, say, the capitalization of Intel or others.
It's not money for them. There is this money, they are interested in increasing this money. They want to come here. Therefore, the question is who are the buyers,” the expert explained.
According to him, Ukrainian farmers are not able to compete with international companies.
“What is important to them is their economic ability to win this competition in confrontation with urban Ukrainians and foreigners.
Today they, in this trio, are “foreigner - urban Ukrainian - rural Ukrainian”... the weakest is the rural Ukrainian.
Yes, they would like to sell it to someone, but looking at where this land will go and what it can lead to, he thinks about it. The economically active part, those who are still trying to work on the land, clearly understand that when the land market opens, they will be the last among these three, and there will be nothing left. If there is no money, they lose everything,” Sabluk concluded.
The bill to liberalize the circulation of agricultural land, he believes, will lead to even greater concentration of land in the hands of a few owners, as has already happened in Latin America.
“The situation with this bill is very similar to Latin America in the 60s. in Argentina and Brazil during the colonies, 40-60% of the land was in the hands of several dozen families. This has been the case since colonial times. And when they liberally opened the market and thought that big capital would come, capital did not come to small family farmers, it came and strengthened the position of these landlords. Today, these countries have an unemployment rate of 30-40%,” the expert concluded.
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