Land reform in Ukraine: priorities and institutional preconditions for their deepening

It has been proved that the desire to appropriate land rent is the main motive of agrarian business activity, which under the existing institutional gaps within the system of land relations substantially creates excessive tension in terms of land issue. It has been determined that the main institutional gaps of land relations in Ukraine are as follows: absence of regulatory and procedural framework to establish a specialized land bank; formal character of economic stimulation for land resources reproduction and protection; inconsistency of the system of restriction on the level of land ownership; asymmetric information on innovations in land legislation for different agrarian businesses (private agricultural businesses, agricultural enterprises, agro-industrial associations); discriminatory nature of granting state subsidies to certain categories of agricultural producers; unjustified import and insufficiently prepared implementation of land management institutions into domestic land-use practices that have long been formed in economically developed countries; contradictions between foreign economic goals and the policy of state land protectionism; inconsistent and unsystematic regulatory and procedural framework for reengineering of reclaimed territories in the most depressed regions. It has been determined that under current conditions, when a critical mass of institutional preconditions for the establishment of a modern land market has not yet been created in Ukraine, it is impossible to remove restrictions on the processed of purchase and sale of agricultural lands. It has been substantiated that the formation of a modern financial and economic mechanism of management over different categories of lands and land use is an important prerequisite for the creation of a fullfledged agricultural lands market and the decentralization of land resources management system. A new format of institutional provision for financing restoration and protection of lands should contribute to the accumulation of part of land payments in special funds in order to ensure targeting of their use, in particular, for the restoration of natural properties of soils and the ordering of land masses.