You're reading: Agrarian associations asking president, parliament to retain beneficial taxation

 The Ukrainian Agribusiness Club, the Association of Farmers and Private Landowners of Ukraine and the Agrarian Union of Ukraine intend to ask the president and Ukrainian parliament to support the retaining of a beneficial taxation regime for agricultural producers.

“According to our calculations, the sum of losses will reach over Hr 19 billion if the tax benefits are canceled, which will result in a reduction of margins by over 50 percent,” UCAB Director General Volodymyr Lapa said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

He noted that according to one of the paragraphs of the national action plan for 2013, the cabinet is to revise tax incentives.

“We hope that the revision will not concern the cancelation of tax benefits, but it will concern the adjustment of certain points,” he added.

UCAB said that the cancelation of benefits would affect 56,000 companies that employ 650,000 people in rural areas. The number of unprofitable companies in this case will grow from 17-30 percent to over 50 percent, according to UCAB.

Head of the Agrarian Union, Hennadiy Novikov, said that the cancelation of tax benefits in agriculture would finally influence production volumes of agricultural products in the country.

“The liquidation of indirect support for agriculture – the fixed tax and benefits for value added tax – will result in a reduction of gross production of agricultural products by 8 percent,” Novikov said.

Press conference participants said that special taxation regimes for farmers have been in effect in Ukraine since 1998, thanks to which in the period from 1999 to 2011 agricultural production grew by 70 percent.