OREANDA-NEWS. December 14, 2011. Belarus’ regional authorities will have to seek the president’s consent at early stages of allocating farmland for purposes other than agricultural production. The new practice of redistributing farmland was introduced by Ordinance #520 of November 11, 2011, signed by the President of Belarus, Alexander Gayev of the State Committee for Property Management told a news conference Wednesday.

The president had been the only authority to deal with land distribution issues in Belarus until ordinance No. 667 of 27 December 2007 was issued. The decree extended the authority onto region administrations and Minsk City Hall. Since then the amount of withdrawn farmlands has increased dozens of times.

In 2007 362.6 hectares of farmlands was withdrawn. After the authority was extended onto regional governors, the figure rose to over 1,364 hectares in 2008. In 2009 it was close to 5,500 hectares, including over 4,200 hectares of arable lands. In 2010 the figure reached 2,300 hectares.