Land registration for landowners in Ukraine is crucial (03/03/96)

Land registration for landowners in Ukraine is crucial

by Anizia H. Zarowsky

At present there is an intensive drive to privatize lands in Eastern and Central Europe. Ukraine also has started to measure out and distribute individual parcels of land to private individuals.

In order to privatize such lands, a centrally controlled and supervised legal cadastre, or land titles registry office, for owners of individual land parcels, must be established in Ukraine. Parcels should be measured out by fully qualified land surveyors, and the land surveys should be registered in the appropriate land registry offices. A system of land registrations should be located in all the regions of Ukraine and centrally supervised and regulated from Kyiv.

The legality of registration of all land transactions in such cadastre/land registration offices should be guaranteed by the government of Ukraine, which should also guarantee title to the land and all legal registered transactions (which includes each land act issued during the privatization process) for each individual landowner.

If such a land registration system is not implemented all over Ukraine now that privatization of land has commenced, then, within a very short period of time, major complications will develop with very negative results in this sphere of economic development in Ukraine. All privatization will come to a standstill.

Furthermore, if the delay in implementing land registration systems for legal landowners continues much longer, serious complications will arise, causing great and unnecessary additional costs when land registration offices finally are established in Ukraine. These offices will ensure and guarantee the correct and legal surveying of lands in Ukraine and put the whole matter of land privatization on a legal course.

Land registration offices and systems are in use - and have been for centuries - all over the world. They also existed in Ukraine: in western Ukraine (Galicia and Zakarpattia) when it was ruled by Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in eastern Ukraine during the rule of the Russian empire during tsarist times.

In eastern Ukraine, this land registration system was finally liquidated in 1933 after the Great Famine created by the Soviet government, which completely wiped out private land ownership and killed over 7 million private landowners and their families. In western Ukraine private land ownership was finally destroyed by the Soviets in 1948.

Today, if Ukraine and other republics of the former Soviet Union are to take back their rightful place in the community of European nations and the free world, it is absolutely necessary to restore and return private ownership of lands to individual owners. Such ownership must have legal and geodesic guarantees from the government. Each individual parcel of land has to have exact geodesic measurements and land surveys of its boundaries, and each document and survey has to be registered in the proper land registry office run and guaranteed by the government.

The establishment of such land registry offices will give full legal and geodesic protection to all legal real estate transactions in Ukraine, such as government land acts during the privatization process, long-term leasing, the purchase and sale of lands, mortgages (both commercial and private), auction sales of lands, inheritance transfers of property, zoning regulations, etc. It will also provide the proper legal infrastructure for financial stability uniformly throughout Ukraine.

This final reorganization and tidying up of land ownership in Ukraine with the help of exact and legally approved geodesic surveys will establish each parcel owner in Ukraine and will finally establish all land ownership in Ukraine. This includes land ownership by the government, municipalities, villages, collective or cooperative farms, and individual private landowners.

Such land reorganization and registration based on fully implemented land laws is crucial to the formation of a just and legal land taxation system in Ukraine. A just land taxation system will form an important part of the national budget of Ukraine as it does in all other countries in the world.

It will give desperately needed funds to local municipal administrations in order to provide the necessities of civilized life, such as construction and repair of city streets and road, improvement of municipal transportation, maintenance of waterworks and sewers, schools, hospitals, public parks and children's playgrounds. It will also provide funds to help indigent pensioners and families in the form of housing.

The goal of raising the standard of living of the average citizen of Ukraine will depend in large part on the quick realization and implementation of land privatization, which awaits a decree by the president of Ukraine in the near future. It should be based on full legal directives regarding the procedures required to establish (or re-establish) a land registration system for legal landowners in Ukraine.

Anizia H. Zarowsky is an advisor to the Cabinet Ministers of Ukraine. This is a translation of an article originally published in Ukrainian World, No. 37, September 14, 1995, in Kyiv.

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