Newly elected Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk has pledged to liberalise the nation's land market in Ukraine by the middle of the next year.

"We emphasise that we will model [the land market liberalisation] so that nobody loses land, so that people become richer as a result of this reform, and not vice versa. We will carefully approach planning, and the market will be introduced when we are ready for this, and we plan to do this in the middle of next year," news agency Interfax quoted Honcharuk as saying on August 2.

However, the same day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ordered a bill on the farmland market to be drawn up and to be submitted to the nation's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, by October 1, annulling a moratorium on the sale of land by the same date.

The president also appointed Honcharuk and Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture Tymofiy Mylovanov responsible for the execution of the order.

In December 2018, the nation's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, extended the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land until January 1, 2020. Ukraine keeps extending the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land despite the high priority the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gives to creating a land market.

The IMF said in its staff report published in October 2016 that while Ukraine has a vast area of arable land, use of this land is currently limited by legislation, restricting private owners' ability to sell their land to more efficient users and constraining the use of land as loan collateral.

"Amending the legislation to unlock land-related transactions would generate significant economic gains, including higher incomes and greater tax revenues. New legislation on agricultural land sales is expected to be submitted by end-September 2016," the IMF wrote.

In May, Ukraine's Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said the Ukrainian cabinet will allow sales of agriculture land only to individuals with Ukrainian citizenship and up to a maximum of 200 hectares of land per person.

On August 8, Zelenskiy also said that as a result of large-scale privatisation, effective investors would receive hundreds of interesting objects. "We will conduct large-scale privatisation and sell hundreds of interesting objects to effective investors, create normal competitive rules in the energy markets and simplify the rules of doing business removing restrictions," Zelenskiy underlined.