You're reading: Corruption hampers Ukraine’s agrarian sector reform: EBRD

Unstable investment climate and high level of corruption are preventing Ukraine from implementing structural changes in the agricultural sector, Gilles Mettetal, the Director for Agribusiness at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), has said.

In an interview with the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly he noted that these factors made many potential financial donors to shift, for example, to Brazil and other countries with favorable investment climate. "And those companies that have taken root on the Ukrainian grain market are being harassed and intimidated. The only way out remained is to reduce production," the EBRD official said.

According to him, the EBRD’s office in London permanently received information on the intention of Ukraine’s leadership to monopolize grain export. Both international and Ukrainian companies complained not about the size of quotas but the impossibility of realizing investment in such a situation, said Mettetal.