The FINANCIAL — The World Bank Board of Directors on October 15 approved an additional loan of €81 million (US$90.59 million equivalent) to the Government of Turkey for the Land Registry and Cadastre Modernization Project (LRCMP). The project will continue to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the land registry and cadastre services in Turkey. The original loan for LRCMP in the amount of €135 million (US$203 million equivalent) has been implemented successfully since its approval by the Board on May 1, 2008 and will be closed by December 31, 2015.
While the Turkish Cadastre and Registration system is considered one of the most effective in the Europe and Central Asia region and registration of property transactions is done within one day in many offices, there still are shortcomings to be addressed to ensure that the system modernizes to reach the same service level as in the European Union countries. Many of the Cadastre and Land Registry offices rely on manual systems, with old documents, some of them dating back to the Ottoman times, according to the World Bank.
The most challenging aspect is that cadastral maps continue to be in a paper format, vary in accuracy and consistency, and not all of them are linked to the national network. This makes it difficult to support E-government applications as cadastre maps serve as a base mapping for many government applications. Furthermore, in many localities maps are out of date and do not correspond to the ground locations and areas.
The overall goal of the original project was to contribute to the government agenda to improve the quality and effectiveness of public services through spreading and making effective e-government applications.
The proposed additional financing would primarily help finance the costs associated with scaling up cadastre renovation through: (i) renovating and updating cadastre maps to support digital cadastre and land registry information; (ii) making the digital land registry and cadastre information available to public and private entities; (iii) improving customer services in land registry and cadastre offices; (iv) improving human resources in General Directorate Land Registry and Cadastre (TKGM); and (v) developing policies and capacity to introduce best international practices in property valuation in Turkey.
“The project constitutes a next generation of World Bank operations in the area of land management and cadastre, where the country already has a well-functioning property rights regime, but is striving to take the land registry and cadaster data use to the next level by spreading its benefits to people, businesses and multiple sectors, and facilitating better access to real estate information through the e-government platform,” said Elif Ayhan, Project Team Leader.
“This project will also help improve customer service by reducing the time taken to register a property transaction to a few hours, and develop property valuation methodologies in line with international standards. The World Bank is pleased to be a part of this initiative.”
The project will be funded by an IBRD flexible variable spread loan. It will have a maturity of 10.5 years including a 5 year grace period.
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