Regulations on consolidation of agricultural land came into force

The regulations concerning the consolidation of agricultural land took effect. The authorities intend to foster the consolidation process that did not make progress in the past years. Under the document, the settlements that want to join their agricultural land will be selected at the first stage. The consolidation project will be worked out at the second stage and implemented by the beneficiaries. Afterwards, the rights of the owners of land forming part of the consolidated fields will be authenticated by registering the documents at the cadastral offices. The agricultural land will be consolidated by merging the parceled lots of one owner as well as the fields into corporative organizations through sale-purchase, lease, cooperation, and association. The expenses of formulating a project for consolidating large fields amount to 50,000-70,000 lei. The official registration of the property rights will cost about 120 lei, while the registration of documents with the cadastre offices – 40 lei. The authorities say that according to the global practice, the consolidation of all the agricultural fields can take 60 to 150 years. The authorities have recently announced that there were selected six settlements that will implement pilot land consolidation projects with the financial assistance of the World Bank, which will offer 700,000 USD for the purpose. Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev said recently that the scientists, practitioners and politicians convinced themselves that no value added agriculture is possible on an area smaller than 350-400 hectares and the investments cannot be recouped. According to him, one billion lei went on parceling out the land and it took ten years to persuade the donors that financed the parceling and destruction to allocate additional recourses to consolidate the land. According to preliminary estimates, the consolidation of half of Moldova’s agricultural fields will cost the agricultural owners about 340 mln lei.