The Republic of Belarus

In USSR, and then some time in the Republic of Belarus, the use of land was free. The right to use land and the lease right were granted to legal persons and citizens free for charge. Land parcels of rural locations didn’t have prices in monetary terms. The purchase of agricultural land were taken into their appropriation for non-agricultural land use, based on the standards of the cost of new land in exchange withdrawn non-agricultural purposes and standards of compensation for loss of agricultural production. The law of private ownership of land was absent. Transactions for the disposal of land owned by the state recognized and declare invalid. Mortgage of land parcels and their monetary valuation wasn’t performed. That was not necessary.

Since 1991 land use and land tenure in the Republic of Belarus has become paid. Since that time yearly payments for land is charged in forms of land tax and land rent. Rent for land is determined by fixed rates. In 1993 the Republic of Belarus has put in place The Law of the Republic of Belarus “On the right of land ownership” that has encouraged the right of land private property in the country. The subjects of land private property were only citizens of the Republic of Belarus. At the end of December 1997 changes and rider were made to The Law. In connection with these changes entities of the country receives the right to purchase land ownership. In transactions to alienation land parcels started to be used discount, normative and negotiated prices. Since 1999 The Law became a part of The Code of the Republic of Belarus for land. The Code also provides the same kinds of prices.

Normative price of transferred to citizens private ownership land was established by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers on October 1993 №679 (table 4.5). Every year this price should be indexed with the use of inflation rate.

Table 4.5. Normative land prices of some cities in the Republic of Belarus

The rural location	Population, thousand ppl	Normative price
Thousand of rubles/m^2	USD/m^2
Minsk	1712.9	5.180	2.32
Gomel	501.9	4.003	1.79
Mogilev	368.9	3.846	1.72
Vitebsk	355.8	3.589	1.61
Grodno	306.3	3.754	1.68
Brest	297.2	3.381	1.51
Baranovichi	173.0	3.100	1.39
Pinsk	132.3	2.756	1.23
Lida	99.9	2.496	1.12
Slonim	52.9	1.918	0.86

If a land parcel was sold into ownership of an entity then the price of land can’t be lower than the normative land price that was set by the Council of the republic of Belarus with coordination of the President. Normative price doesn’t depend on factors of land supply and demand. The prices are artificial because they don’t reflect conditions and processes occurring in real life.

Negotiated prices are set by the residents of transaction and they can’t be lower than normative price. We can say that negotiated price reflects the market price. Also we can estimate their level by tenders and auctions of immobile property sale and land sale. For example, land prices from sale tender of land for construction and treatment of apartments in Minsk on April, 29 2001 were in range 8-49 USD/m².

In Belarus different forms of payments and levy have got the wide expansion and these forms have place when land parcels are allowed to executive and administrative department. For example, these are the fee for infrastructure, payments of share participation in the maintenance of material-technical base of the road, etc. The purpose of these payments is to take into account market value of land usage rights. The actual amount of these payments is hidden price of rights of permanent usage or lifetime inheritable possession.

There is certain difficulty monitoring the prices of land in Belarus. The assessment mechanism cannot be created without this monitoring. There is a situation that citizens aren’t interested to pay real prices in alienation agreements. All prices that are made to agreement can be divided into 3 classes: 1) the false price equal to the normative price of land; 2) the false price without the required declaration; 3) the real price. Analysis of transactions in all rural locations in Minsk region shows that in 2000 the real price was included in about 31% of agreements; normative – in 56% of agreements; the false price without the required declaration – in 13% of agreements.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29