Over the course of a year, regulatory bodies tried to answer the question: "Can grain purchased in the manner defined by regional state administration order No. 270 of 17.07.03 'On the Formation of Regional Grain Resources' be considered a regional resource?" To finally clarify all the grounds for the formation of local grain reserves last year, the efforts of representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, the State Committee for Land Resources, the Cabinet of Ministers and people's deputies were needed. During this time, officials in the highest government offices considered no fewer than 20 deputy inquiries and appeals. However, only after a speech from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada and a personal meeting of people's deputy Serhiy Slabenko with Vice Prime Minister for Agro-Industrial Complex Ivan Kyrylenko on 23 March 2004, at which the issue was raised of returning to Volyn agrarians the funds lost as a result of the application of administrative methods in purchasing the grain harvest at reduced prices, Deputy Prosecutor General Olha Kolinko gave instructions to conduct a detailed check of the compliance with current legislation of the formation of the regional grain resource in Volyn. On the instructions of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy issued a conclusion regarding the formation of regional grain resources in Volyn Oblast and reported that since local budget funds were not used to purchase the oblast's grain, such volumes of grain cannot be classified as regional resources. An additional check by the prosecutor of Volyn Oblast, taking into account these conclusions, will finally establish the compliance of order No. 270 with other requirements of legislation. "Ukrainian legislation does not provide for administrative interference by the executive branch that would hinder the free movement of grain flows and instead requires it to create competitive conditions for determining operators that would have the right to purchase grain on specialized grain exchanges," notes people's deputy Serhiy Slabenko. The non-compliance of the Volyn authorities' actions with these legal requirements during last year's harvest became the cause of a situation in which grain in Volyn was bought up at a price almost half of that set by the Government in October 2003 (1200 UAH per tonne), and thus commercial structures that received grain at low prices as their own property found themselves in a favorable situation. Volyn peasants were short by more than 10 million UAH. And bread prices rapidly went up. To avoid the same situation this year, for Volyn agricultural producers it is an axiom: the formation and use of regional grain resources must be carried out exclusively by concluding agreements on accredited commodity exchanges by operators that have passed the appropriate competitive selection." On 5 July 2004, people's deputy Serhiy Slabenko sent another appeal addressed to Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Ivan Kyrylenko with a request for a personal meeting regarding bringing to administrative liability the officials who allowed negligence and mistakes in the formation of the regional grain resource in Volyn last year.