Today, November 22, a general meeting of participants of the Ukrainian Agri Council (UAC) participants was held. During the meeting agricultural producers discussed the main problems of the agrarian sector and possible ways of their solution.
Land issues have become one of the most important topics for discussion. Agrarians stressed the unwillingness of Ukraine to immediately open the land market from January 1, 2019.
Another important topic was the search for a fair mechanism for taxation of the agrarian sector.
They talked about the struggle of the UAC for the return of VAT refunds for the return of VAT refunds for the export of oilseeds and the consequences of the adoption of the infamous "oil amendments" at the end of last year. Also, the issue was to reduce the value added tax rate for some types of agricultural products.
In addition, participants of the UAC expressed concern about the spread of the shadow market of agricultural products in Ukraine due to the growth of the share of "single owners" who do not pay taxes to the budget. The tax burden on the legally cultivating 1 ha of commodity agricultural land is over 2000 UAH, while "shadow farmers" pay up to 100 UAH per 1 hectare. As a result, farmers who work officially lose their competitiveness in the rental market.
In order to promote the maximum legalization of the agrarian market, the UAC has developed a bill which is created to promote a uniform payment of taxes by agricultural producers.
Another no less important issue for discussion was the problems in the work of "Ukrzaliznytsia", through which farmers throughout the country can not provide scheduled shipment of goods and often break the foreign economic contracts. This, in turn, leads to significant losses as the agrarians themselves, and negatively affects the volumes of export of Ukrainian agricultural products.
Also, the participants of the UAC talked about the imperfect mechanism of state support for the agrarian sector, in which grants are received either by the largest agroholdings or remain unused in the budget. So, as of November 1, 2018, state support programs were implemented only on 25.7%. From the allocated 6.3354 billion UAH it was actually paid 1.638 million UAH.
Agrarians talked about the problems of excessive prices for fertilizers on the domestic market and the mechanisms of protection against raiding. In particular, the UAC spoke about the results of the security company "Haydamaky", established in November 2017, to protect the members of the UAC from raider attacks.
At the meeting participants decided to direct official appeals from the Ukrainian regional councils to the heads of state on all discussed issues, and to highlight the position of the domestic agricultural sector.
