MILAN, Italy -- The Finance Minister Alcides Jiménez Quiñónez of Paraguay and the Inter-American Development Bank President Enrique V. Iglesias today signed the contract for a $9 million loan to modernize the national cadastre and land registry systems.
The upgrading will lead to the elimination of major restrictions to title registration and an increase in the legal security of land tenure. It will also help address problems of the property adjudication process that arose following the Agrarian Reform that began in 1963.
Under the modernization program, a legal framework will be established to link the geographic database of the national cadastre to that of the property registry - an important step in paving the way for the regularization of land tenure. It will also define cost-efficient means to solve land tenure issues, including providing full property rights to landholders in colonized areas.
At the same time the databases of both the cadastre and the land registry will be computerized. Personnel will be trained to operate the upgraded systems, which will provide more legal certainty to property owners, give farmers more security for investments, and increase the tax roster for municipalities.
The cadastre is the public record of all physical, economic and legal data on properties in the country. The registry is the legal mechanism to establish ownership of property.
Updating the two systems will correct an existing imbalance in which many properties have not been properly registered or sold by their informal owners, creating economic and social uncertainty.
As part of a decentralization process, three new, regional offices for the Public Registries Directorate will be established in the departments of Alto Paraná, Itapúa and Caaguazú.
Boundaries will be established for 35 municipalities to lay the foundation for municipal jurisdiction for eventual regularization of land tenure. District boards will be set up to update property information with the participation of municipalities.
The new loan reflects the strategy of the IDB and Paraguay to modernize public institutions and develop rural areas. Other Bank loans to Paraguay in recent years have supported modernization of banking, education, health, statistics and water and sanitation.