The five-year moratorium on the sale and purchase of land in Kyrgyzstan will be lifted. It was one of the conditions set down by a recent IMF mission for resuming loans to the country.
But at the same time, President Askar Akaev stipulated in an address to parliament in December that restrictions are needed to preclude the purchase of land by foreign citizens and companies and to impose a tax that would prevent the emergence of rich landowners. Only persons who have lived in rural areas for a minimum of two years will be eligible to buy land, but there are concerns about how impoverished farmers would manage to do so.
