President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced plans to launch the land market in 2020.
He said this during a speech at the Ukrainian-Turkish business forum.
"This year we will definitely carry out land reform, which will enable us to create a market for 40 million hectares of land next year, which is one of the best in the world in terms of quality," he said.
For many years, Ukraine has had a moratorium on the sale of land. It was first introduced in 2002 for a period of five years. The moratorium was considered as a temporary measure due to the chaos in the land market at that time. Since then, the moratorium has been extended many times, the last one until 1 January 2020. Extension of the moratorium is technical in nature and does not make sense since the sale of land is still prohibited due to the absence of a law on the sale of agricultural land.
The lifting of the moratorium is required by the International Monetary Fund and is supported by leading Ukrainian economists. Previous President Petro Poroshenko supported land reform but parliament was against it.