Seimas: small areas of state farmland can be sold

The Parliament allowed farmers to buy small plots of up to 3 hectares of land adjacent to their land from the state, with most of the money going to the Defence Fund.

Parliament also decided that a single person will not be able to buy more than 21 hectares of such land.

Amendments to the laws on the State Defence Fund, Land and Acquisition of Land for Agricultural Purposes, which provide for this, were adopted on Thursday at a meeting of the Seimas in the absence of the opposition.

From next year, more people will be able to acquire state agricultural land without an auction, and 80 per cent of the proceeds from the sale of plots will go to the State Defence Fund.

Private landowners with land adjacent to the state land to be sold will be able to buy plots in non-urbanised areas that are suitable for agricultural activities.

Along with the authorisation to privatise state land, the regulation of related parties has been adjusted; persons and companies will be considered related if one of them owns at least 5% of the shares in the company. Currently, the requirement is 25%.

Kastytis Žuromskas, the Minister of Environment, has said that there are 110,000 state-owned land plots of up to 3 hectares, with a total area of 127,000 ha. He said that according to current value maps, the state could receive around €828 million from land sales.

The amendments to the land law were initiated at the end of the last parliamentary term by MPs Kazys Starkevičius and Viktoras Fiodorovas, who then proposed to sell plots of land no larger than 10 hectares.