On Wednesday, January 15, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed Law of Ukraine No. 4154-IX, which provides for the update of the National Program for the Development of Ukraine's Mineral Resources Base for the period up to 2030.
This is evidenced by the information in the card of the draft law No. 6227. This was also reported by the Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
The full title of the signed document: “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Updating the National Program for the Development of the Mineral Resource Base of Ukraine for the Period up to 2030 and Regulation of Certain Issues Regarding Minerals and Components of Strategic and Critical Importance.”
Law No. 4154-IX updates the development program, which was approved more than 10 years ago, back in 2011.
The law also amends the Subsoil Code of Ukraine, in particular, with regard to minerals of strategic and critical importance for the sustainable development of the economy and the state's defense capability. These changes are necessary to implement the reforms set out in the Ukraine Facility Plan.
What's new
In particular, among the innovations:
- the division of types of minerals into 4 categories according to their industrial and economic value is introduced: category A (significant reserves, intensively mined), category B (reserves are small or depleted, limited extraction, subject to import), category B (significant reserves, limited or no extraction – unprofitable), category G (reserves are not developed and not sufficiently studied).
- it is separately highlighted that the state is interested in the maximum substitution of hydrocarbon imports;
- coal from the main source of providing Ukraine's energy needs became one of the main ones;
- updated mineral reserve figures compared to 2010 data.
The new Law provides for:
- Concentration of geological prospecting works in the priority areas of development of the mineral and raw material base.
- Concentration of state funding of subsoil research exclusively on exploration and exploration and evaluation works with the aim of identifying investment-attractive objects. Further exploration of mineral deposits will not be carried out at the expense of the State Budget and must be financed by subsoil users under the conditions of investment risk. For its part, the state ensures the creation of the necessary transparent and stable regulatory conditions for the activities of subsoil users to increase mineral reserves and their further extraction.
- The state remains responsible for carrying out regional studies of the territory of Ukraine, aimed at expanding the mineral and raw material base, in particular the completion of geological mapping under the "Derzhgeokarta-200" program, hydrogeological and ecological-geological works and maintaining state balance sheets and mineral inventories, monitoring the state of the resource base, activities subsurface users, etc.
- Scientific and information provision of all stages of work, including through constant monitoring of trends in the development of the global and Ukrainian market of mineral raw materials.
Special attention is paid to preserving and ensuring the maximum availability of accumulated geological information for the efficiency of its use by potential subsoil users due to the rapid implementation of modern digital technologies for its storage and use.
Financing
The previous edition of the Program provided for the amount of financing for the period 2011-2030 at the expense of the state budget in the amount of UAH 26.1 billion. In the new version of the Law, in Chapter X "Volumes and Sources of Funding", it is noted that the minimum amount of funding for the full complex of geological exploration works for the restoration and expansion of the mineral and raw material base of Ukraine in 2025-2030 should be an average of UAH 258.2 million per year (according to modern prices). For the years 2025-2030, state funding in the amount of at least 1.54935 billion UAH is expected, and the total cost of the Program implementation, taking into account the costs in 2011-2024 (I and II stages – 2.02477 billion UAH) is predicted to be at least 3, UAH 57,412 billion.
The authors of the law foresee that a significant part of the funds spent on the implementation of the Program will be compensated during its implementation due to revenues from the sale of special permits for the use of subsoil, for the plots allocated during the implementation of the Program, as well as from the sale of geological information created during the implementation of the Program.
The amounts of the mentioned revenues only in 2019 and for 11 months of 2020 amounted to UAH 992 and 878 million, the explanatory note says.
The full text of the law can be found at site parliament or newspaper "Voice of Ukraine" for January 16, 2025.
As EcoPolitic reported earlier, December 16, 2024 the ecocommittee supported update of the Program for the development of the mineral and raw material base of Ukraine. And after 2 days, on December 18, the Verkhovna Rada voted for this draft law.
