(Rose _et al._ 2023). Long-term impacts will depend on the extent and speed with which low-cost transport routes can be restored. Second, 5.3 million individuals are estimated to have been internally displaced in the first three weeks of the war alone (Leasure _et al._ 2023) and overall displacement, including international migrants, of more than 8 million or 20% of the country’s pre-war population (Adema _et al._ 2023). This curtailed labor availability and reduced the economy’s human capital stock (Egert _et al._ 2023). While many out-migrants may have left with an intention to return, such return becomes less likely the longer they stay and get settled in host communities. Finally, the war affected agricultural production directly by creating damage to the capital stock relevant for agriculture (Khoshnood _et al._ 2022), destruction of standing crops or war damages of agricultural fields (Kussul _et al._ 2023) that, as in the case of mining or unexploded ordnance (Duncan et al. 2023), may reduce productive capacity in the long term or in a way that is costly to restore. Damages to the agricultural capital stock are estimated at US$ 10.3 billion, 57% is for machinery, 18% for storage facilities, and the remainder for outputs, inputs, and crops or livestock (Neyter et al. 2024) out of a total of US$ 152 billion (World Bank 2024).

# **2.2 The PSG program and the SAR platform**

Building on legal foundations created by the 2020 reforms, the government, via the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food (MAPF), established the State Agrarian Registry (SAR) in August 2022 and expedited its roll-out as a platform that would allow digital interaction between farmers and state organs and accredited users in the private sector. One objective was to establish a digital tool to overcome the informational and institutional barriers that, in the past, made it difficult for credit constrained small and medium farmers to access state support.<sup>8</sup> A second objective was to reduce leakage to intermediaries by transferring support directly into beneficiaries’ bank accounts. To allow this, all farmers, irrespective of their formal status a (i.e., a registered legal entity, a family farming business (FOP), or as individual) can use their electronic signature to sign up at the SAR website (https://www.dar.gov.ua/) without charge, thus avoiding the transaction cost and bureaucratic hurdles associated with registration as a legal entity. To assess the extent to which these objectives were achieved, MAPF, with EU support, asked the World Bank to conduct an independent evaluation of the PSG program and provided access to necessary data.

In the sign-up process, SAR gathers owner details from the State Registry of Property Rights and parcel details from the land cadaster for all land parcels to which the farmer has registered rights. This allows the government to establish, in rudimentary form, all the elements used by integrated administration and control systems (IACS) operational in EU countries.<sup>9</sup> It also helps establish the SAR as a trusted source of

> 8 It has been argued that traditional ways of transferring state support in Ukraine had little economic justification, were non-transparent, and, by _ex post_ subsidizing interest rates for farmers who have already taken out loans, have little economic justification and offer no additionality. For example, refer to <u>https://voxukraine.org/en/the-new-agricultural-support-system-in-ukraine-who-really-benefits.</u> 9 The IACS is used to manage, monitor and control all area or animal-based common agricultural policy (CAP) interventions (such as direct payments interventions and area and animal-based rural development interventions). It consists of several digital interconnected databases,

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