News

Moldova Seeks Return of Foreign-Bought Agricultural Land

April 11, 201808:59
The Moldovan government wants to adopt legislation to prevent the large-scale sell-off of major agricultural land holdings to foreign investors, but its draft law has a series of loopholes.
Agricultural plots next to the Old Orhei historical and archaeological complex. Photo: EPA/Roman Pilipey.

Foreigners will be barred from buying agricultural land or forests in Moldova and are also obliged to sell any inherited land to the state, according to the new draft legislation to amend the National Land Code.

“Foreigners or stateless persons cannot acquire the title to agricultural land or forest land”, the draft legislation says – and if they do, their purchase documents will be regarded as illegal.

“In the case of the acquisition of agricultural land by inheritance, [foreigners] are obliged to transfer it within one year,” the draft legislation adds.

It warns that if an individual foreign landowner does not comply with the law, the state will have the right to buy his or her land at the market rate based on an evaluation report.

The draft legislation represents a rejection of a request made by the Association of Foreign Investors, FIA in Moldova for liberalisation of the land market in the country.

According to FIA estimates published in September 2017, 15 per cent of the total agricultural land in Moldova is already owned by foreigners directly or via proxies.

“Under these circumstances, it would be normal to legalise this process,” the president of FIA, Aleksander Koss, was quoted as saying by the Mold-Street.com news website.

However the new legislation offers some loopholes for foreign investors who can buy land through local companies that have at least one Moldovan shareholder.

Many offshore companies have managed to evade the legislation by buying land using local middlemen in Moldova whose ownership is solely on paper.

Moldova also adopted a law in October 2017 allowing anybody can acquire Moldovan citizenship as long he or she can contribute at least 100,000 euros to the Sustainable Development Fund, a state fund that ensures the sustainability of foreign investments in Moldova, or will invest 250,000 euros in strategic development areas.

According to official statistics from 2017, Moldova has about 2.5 million hectares of agricultural land and the state is the biggest landowner.