State Agricultural Register: prerequisites for implementation and expected results

On 4 September Draft Law No. 3295, which may create the State Agricultural Register, was adopted in the first reading. What is the need for its adoption based on, and what results are anticipated from it?

Look for the answers in the new commentary by EVERLEGAL Junior Associate Maksym Mykoliuk for The Ukrainian Journal of Business Law below or at the link. 

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Administration of state support is one of the weakest points in the agriculture support system of our country. The process of getting state support is excessively bureaucratized, opaque and inaccessible, which makes it unattractive for all agricultural producers, especially for small agricultural businesses.

In addition to the fact that the system of obtaining and distributing public funds contains many corruption risks, it does not allow to conduct either analysis of the potential efficiency of providing public funds or the results of its allocation.

These circumstances made it necessary to create a unified state information system to include data on agricultural producers and ensure effective state support administration in the agricultural industry.

At the beginning of 2020, the pilot version of the State Agricultural Register (hereinafter – the “Register”) was launched — an electronic platform for agricultural producers, and, on 4 September 2020, the Verkhovna Rada approved Draft Law No. 3295 in its first reading, laying the basic principles of the future operation of this platform for the agricultural business in terms of legislation.

The new online system shall become an integrated database of farmers, their property, land, environmental, labor, finance and credit, and other images. The Register will serve for applying for participation in state agricultural support programs as well as for evaluating the results of such programs. These are the objectives to be declared as main ones by the Draft authors and representatives of the Ministry for Development of Economy, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine, which coordinates the Register’s implementation in cooperation with international organizations.

It is also expected that in the future the Register’s features will include the ability to provide users with a wide range of public services, including the state registration of land plots.

According to the authors, from the moment it is passed its principal beneficiary will be small agricultural businesses. There is no doubt that successful creation of the Register will be substantially beneficial for the entire agricultural sector. At the same time, adopting Draft Law No. 3295 in its first reading is only one of the first steps to be taken towards implementation of an ambitious project, as it is too early to discuss the effectiveness and results of implementation.