Ukrainian farmers' fight for the fairness

Since summer of 2015 Ukrainian farmers are protesting against changes in the Tax Code of Ukraine, proposed by Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. According to these changes, state recompense of tax on the additional value is cancelled to agrarian enterprises-producers (except exporters), farmland payment and fixed agricultural tax are increased very much in 2016. Demanding to reject government’s bill, agrarians held meetings near regional state administrations in the various regions of Ukraine in summer and on the beginning of December. Farmers also held large rallies in Kyiv on the 17^th December, bringing to the parliamentary building chopped off cow heads with fir branches, and on the 24^th December 2015, carrying there dead pig in the coffin with several funeral wreaths as the symbols of the farming decline. But exactly on the 24^th December the people’s deputies of Ukraine didn’t listen to Ukrainian peasantry and voted in favour of changing of Tax Code, abolishing special tax regime and enhancing taxes for the agriculture. So then during the next days (the 26^th-30^th December) at the different time farmers had been blocking many principal highways in the country, such as Kharkiv–Simferopol, Kyiv–Kharkiv, Chernivtsi–Kyiv, Odesa–Melitopol, Kirovohrad–Mykolayiv, Kyiv–Chernihiv, Zhytomyr–Vinnytsya, Kyiv–Chop etc. Nowadays agrarians warn that they’ll continue to block the roads if President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko doesn’t veto accepted bill or if the High Council of Ukraine refuses to restore preferential regime of the taxation for the farming. And resignation of the Cabinet of the Ministers of Ukraine, led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, denial from the idea to enhance farmland payment and fixed agricultural tax, necessity to accept laws about unique land tax and about family farms are another requirements of Ukrainian agricultural enterprises.

Ukrainian agrarians are justly indignant, because state recompense of tax on the additional value always gave them the possibility to buy beforehand seeds and fertilizers for the next harvest and a fuel for their agricultural machinery, and liquidation of this state subsidy plus new high taxes may strongly harm or even destroy farms in Ukraine. At least farmers will be obliged to increase prices for own agricultural production and to decrease a quantity of working places on their farms, so unemployment will enlarge among rural population, some farming enterprises may become bankrupt. If changes in the Tax Code of Ukraine from the 24^th December come into force, farmers will slaughter cattle, so all Ukrainians will fell the deficiency of milk and meat in the country.

From the other side Ukrainian peasants are angry that agrarian exporters which are mainly agricultural holdings, registered abroad or been in the part of bigger, often foreign holding, will continue to get 100% state recompense of tax on the additional value from Ukrainian state treasury. Though Ukrainian agricultural holdings buy farming production in the primary manufactures at much lower prices than they sell abroad! So where is conscientiously in Ukrainian state power? I completely support the claims of Ukrainian farmers in their fighting for the fairness!