About Relationships in the Government and Advantages of Lobbyism

The representatives of local authorities usually complain: Kyiv takes out all resources from the regions, and then from a lordly shoulder distributes governmental grants. Can relations between central and local budgets be built on some objective basis, if distribution of money does not depend on self-will? The conversation between our correspondent Valentyn Bushanskyi and the chairman of the the Odesa Regional Council Mykola Skoryk, who has been in charge of it for three years, is about that. As the hero of the movie “The Place of Meeting Can’t Be Changed” said “young worker’s eye is sharp”.

– Agriculture in Ukraine is compared with oil in the Persian Gulf or gas in Russia, as it is the basic resource of development. What do you think about privatization of lands of agricultural designation? 

- I don’t think it’s a problem if the lands of agricultural designation are privatized. Because presently the process of division into shares and privatization of agricultural lands, which designation will be changed soon afterwards, have been already completed, but it is still “in the shade”.  There are a lot of ways how to change the designation of land. And these schemes of privatization are realized through local state administrations. And what is the most important: the mechanism of limitation does not work. The question about the usage of these lands in the future must be started.