Yearbook 2016-2017

Statistical Yearbook “Land Governance Monitoring in Ukraine” is a reference book, which contains all key indicators describing the status of land governance in Ukraine based on administrative data accumulated by the central government authorities.

The current Yearbook is a follow up on activities for better transparency of land governance in Ukraine started within the project “Capacity Development for Evidence-Based Land and Agricultural Policy Making”, which was supported by the World Bank. The Yearbook “Land Governance Monitoring in Ukraine: 2016-2017” is the second edition of the statistical compendium, based on data for July 2015 – June 2017. The previous yearbook covered the period from January 2013 to June 2015.

The Land Governance Monitoring is a system for collecting, storing and publishing data on the status of land governance in Ukraine. The Monitoring is carried out at the level of districts (rayons) and cities of regional subordination, as well as for cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol. These indicators describe the basic characteristics of land resources and land governance, namely the completeness of the State Land Cadastre and State Registry of Property Rights for Real Estate; the number and characteristics of land transactions; land tax; land-related conflicts in court; privatization and expropriation of land; and equality of rights among different categories of land owners and land users.

The Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No.639 of August 23, 2017 “On Implementation of the Pilot Project to Implement Land Governance Monitoring and Making Amendments to Certain Resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine” provides a regulatory framework for collection and publication of information on the land governance.

The Resolution stipulates information exchange among the government authorities, involved in the monitoring. It also contains a list of 65 indicators to be reported.

The list of indicators correspond to the best practices in developed countries and the recommendations of the World Bank (LGAF, 2013). It also describes the land reform in Ukraine. The implementation of Monitoring corresponds to the principles stated in the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure.

Establishment of the Monitoring System is driven by the fact that by 2014, Ukraine had no open comprehensive regionally disaggregated data on land governance suitable for policy analysis and policy design or business decision making. Such lack of data provided room for political speculations on this topic and slow progress of reforms.

The Monitoring aims to:

• establish a system of data exchange on land governance among the state authorities;
• raise the quality of land related services provided by state agencies;
• enhance the quality of land resource management at the state, regional and local levels;
• improve the level of investment attractiveness and improve the business climate in agriculture and rural areas;
• establish an information base for evidence based policy making and improvements in land governance.

The Monitoring is based on the following principles:

• timeliness and comprehensiveness of information;
• accuracy of provided information;
• prompt submission and input of information into the Monitoring system;
• openness of the Monitoring results.

Administrative data for the Monitoring implementation were provided by six government authorities (Figure 2):

Yearbook Structure. The Yearbook consists of 2 parts. Part I – The Monitoring Results – offers reference material on major characteristics of land resources and land governance. Part II is an electronic database with respective values of the Monitoring indicators at rayon and city levels. All the data is in open access in the format suitable for further analysis and will be updated regularly.

Results of the Land Governance Monitoring for July 2015 – June 2017 allow to identify development trends in land governance and problems with data collection and data quality. It also highlights the prospects for further development of the Monitoring system.

Highlights and development trends in land governance 2016-2017:

• As of June 2018, 742 amalgamated territorial communities were established in Ukraine. The Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 60-p of January 31, 2018 started the transfer of state agricultural land outside the settlements to the communal ownership of amalgamated communities. Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr, and Khmelnytsky oblasts are the regions where the largest share of the territory belongs to the amalgamated communities (60%, 56%, and 54% respectively). Zakarpattia, Kyiv, and Luhansk oblasts have the smallest number of amalgamated l communities and the share of land they cover;
• As of January 2017, a total of 18.3 mln land parcels were registered in the State Land Cadastre, which is 564 mln parcels (or 16 %) more than what was registered by January 1, 2015;
• There is a clear increasing trend for the number of land auctions (Figure 3). From 2015 to September 2017, lease rights for 7,371 agricultural land parcels (155,864 ha) and 2,873 non-agricultural land parcels (6,040 ha) in state and communal ownership were auctioned. 69% of all auctions were successful (received the “Auction completed” status);
• During July 2015 – June 2017, 3,632,386 transactions took place were ownership and/or use rights were transferred, 89.5% of transactions were for agricultural land. Lease (76.1%) dominated the transactions with agricultural land. Other transactions included inheritance – 18.3%, sale and purchase – 3.1%, exchange and gifts – 1.6%, emphyteusis – 0.8%, and mortgages – 0.05%. Non-agricultural land market showed an entirely different structure: rent – 19.2%, inheritance – 26.8%, purchase and sale – 36.8%, exchange and gift – 15.4%, and mortgages – 1.8%;
• 9,459,454 citizens have used the right for free privatization of land parcels as of January 1, 2018;
• 26,376 mln UAH of land tax was paid in 2017, including 13% paid by individuals and 87% by legal entities. The average size of a “single” tax (for entrepreneurs of the 4^th group of taxpayment) per 1 ha of agricultural land in Ukraine in 2017 increased by 73 UAH compared to 2016 and was equal to 249 UAH. At the same time, the reported area of agricultural land to be taxed and the number of taxpayers has decreased;
• The state of gender equality in land governance at oblast and rayon level was assessed for the first time. In 2017, women owned 560,000 land parcels (or 1.9 million hectares) more than men. For the convenience of comparison, the index of the gender land distribution was proposed and calculated.

Issues identified in the process of data collection and analysis. The Monitoring implementation revealed several issues. First, is related with delays with provision of the information. Second is non-compliance with the submission standards, duplication of data. There are also cases where important data for policy decisions are not recorded and / or not provided in the form of regular reports. The automation of the Monitoring will help to overcome most of these issues in the future.

Perspective. The experience of the second wave of Land Governance Monitoring proves highlight the need for the following steps: (i) development of the regulatory and legal acts to define the Land Governance Monitoring and establish its implementation procedure; (ii) implementation of an automated reporting systems and publishing the results in open access with regular updates; and (iii) conducting information and awareness-building activities using the Monitoring data to limit the chances for manipulation with the statistics on land governance in Ukraine and to provide tools for making evidence-based decisions in this area.

If you have any questions on the Land Governance Monitoring in Ukraine, please contact: tkorzhovskaya@worldbank.org