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much land could owned in the draft produced by the Cabinet.
The new draft also imposes a limit on foreigners owning no more than 8% of a region’s total farmland, down from the previous Cabinet’s version with a 15% cap. And foreigners total ownership of land in Ukraine is capped at no more than 0.5% of Ukraine’s total farmland, the same limit as in the Cabinet’s version.
The draft also delays the purchase of land by firms that have non-residents as owners to January 1, 2024. But exceptions to this rule will be granted to foreign-owned companies that have already been registered for three years and are leasing land plots at the time of the market's launch to protect the existing investors.
“The latest bill has more chances to be approved by the parliament as it better reflects the position expressed by President Zelenskiy on October 10. That is, for certain time, foreigners won’t be able to buy land, while those foreign interests already present here could have some more rights. While this is a significant step away from liberal land reform, this looks like a comfortable (but not necessary) compromise. If the bill is approved in the current draft, foreigners interested in purchasing Ukrainian farmland still will have a loophole to participate, in our view,” Alexander Paraschiy of Concorde Capital said in a note.
2.5 Ukraine expands gas pipeline connections with Poland
Ukraine’s national gas transport company Ukrtransgaz has completed the modernization of Komarno compressor station in Lviv region, which is part of the Ukraine-Poland interconnector, to expand the amount of gas it can receive from Poland.
Ukraine’s national gas company Naftogaz has as its “base case scenario” that Russia’s gas giant Gazprom will cut Ukraine off from gas supplies on January 1, 2020 when the current gas supply and transit contract expires. For most of this year Naftogaz has been preparing for the cut off by building up reserves and increasing its ability to import gas from the countries to the west of Ukraine.
Currently Naftogaz has a record 20bcm of gas in its reserves just as the heating season starts this month, which, coupled with the circa 20bcm Ukraine produces itself each year, should be enough to get through the winter with no gas from Russia.
The Polish leg upgrade expands the capacity of Ukraine’s gas transmission system to receive gas from Poland to 6.6 bcm a year. The west-east flow tests are scheduled for late October.
“The recent upgrade of the pipeline will enable both east-west and west-east gas flows between Ukraine and Poland, as well as higher capacity and flexibility to ensure uninterrupted heating season 2019/2020 for both countries in case of zero transit of Russian gas from 1 January 2020,” Naftogaz said in a press release.
The design capacity of the modernized pipeline section is 15 mcm per day for
10 UKRAINE Country Report November 2019 www.intellinews.com