"The Ministry of Agriculture will present a project on unused lands."
These remarks were made by Yaser Abdullayev, Head of the Legal and Executive Discipline Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, during today's meeting of the Natural Resources, Energy, and Ecology Committee of the Milli Majlis while discussing the proposed amendments to the "Law on the Protection of Green Spaces."
He stated that a draft law on this issue is currently being worked on:
"Besides, we had a draft law, unfortunately, we could not bring it to the parliament. Within the draft law, we envisaged this issue as a subprogram. There is a mechanism used in Turkey that if a landowner does not use their land for two years, the state leases that land, for example, from Yaser to Arif, and the lease payment is transferred to Yaser’s bank account. This enforces the use of the lands. At the same time, taxes on unused land are increased several times.
Today, we have municipal taxes. However, the application mechanism, it seems, is not at the desired level. Therefore, we have a lot of unused land. True, there are other reasons as well. About 75-76 percent of land plots in Azerbaijan are less than 3 hectares. Farming on these lands is not economically efficient. This could be an additional source of income for you. For instance, if you are a teacher, you can cultivate these lands as a second job and earn money. Economic efficiency in grain growing requires 24 hectares. For gardening and vegetable growing, it is 3-5 hectares. In rural areas, some lands are not used due to the urbanization process. We have ideas regarding this for the future." /oxu.az