The Inter-American Development Bank announced the approval of a $10 million loan to the Dominican Republic to support the modernization of the Supreme Court of Justice agency responsible for property title registration.
Over the past few years the agency, know in Spanish as the Jurisdicción Inmobiliaria, has received support from the IDB to decentralize and improve its registry system. Under the new program it will expand the coverage of the information systems in the title registration bureaus and land tribunals with the highest volume of operations.
New communications networks will be set up, new systems to run and maintain equipment will be implemented and agency staff will be trained. A financial management system will be put in place for a guarantee fund established to compensate people who, through no fault of their own, sustain economic losses due to registry errors.
The program will also help the agency control and reduce the number of constancias anotadas, an affidavit often used as a provisional document in property transfers carried out without conducting surveys. The use of affidavits proliferated over the past 50 years, to a point where these documents account from some 420,000 properties, or 46 percent of all the registered properties in the country.
Among other benefits the program is expected to strengthen the legal certainty of property ownership, helping to improve the business climate and the operation of the Dominican financial and real estate markets.
The loan is for a 25-year term, with a three-year grace period and an adjustable interest rate.