State lands information and management system crumbles
Sri Lanka’s state lands information and management system is crumbling at present after spending Rs.129.89 million since 2013, due to inefficiency of official administration and irregularities during the periods of successive governments, a recent Auditor General’s report revealed.
The present government is also continuing the handing over of state-owned land for multinational and private companies for agricultural and technical purposes on long and short term leased basis without strengthening digital systems of land information and registration.
A more dynamic land market has to be created introducing policy reforms, that offers individuals clear, transferrable titles, and by strengthening the E-State Land Information Management System and the E-Land Registry that are already in use, official sources said.
No action has been taken towards this end but the government is attempting to place 981,368 acres of land under the Land Reform Commission in a land bank, environmentalists complained.
This is one of the preliminary requirements to enter the land market and give private investors access to state land, they said.
The plan to collect information required obtaining these lands owned by the Department of Forests and Wildlife Conservation under all Divisional and Government Agents is currently underway.
A gazette notification has already been published on expediting the issuance of legal documents to those who have occupied state lands.
This is to enhance investment opportunities and to promote dairy and food production, under the government’s policy “Vistas of prosperity and Splendour”.
Legal documents would be issued to selected applicants in all districts except for Colombo and Gampaha in which special development projects are to be implemented, the gazette said.
Digital systems of land information and registration, such as the e-State Land Information Management System and the e-Land Registry that are already in use are being carried out under the purview of the Provincial Land Commissioner’s Department and the Department of Land Commissioner General.
The Land Commissioner General’s Department’s collection of land tax areas in inter provincial colonisation scheme has not been satisfactory due to poor follow up actions, the audit report identified.
It has become impossible to obtain required information on tax recovery as information of all leased lands had not been entered into that IT system even by the end of the year 2019/2020 under review, government audit inquiry revealed.
A sum of Rs.28.75 million in taxes had not been recovered and another sum of Rs.2.9 billion had been in arrears by the end of the year 2019/2020 in the tax revenue from the land leasing process.
Although it had been preliminarily planned to start the Bimsaviya title registration programme in 2002 and to end it in 2021 and although 17 years had elapsed by the end of 2019, surveying activities had been completed only in 1359 Grama Niladhari Divisions out of the 3621Grama Niladhari Divisions in 57 Divisional Secretariat areas.
When transferring lands on lease to the technical sector by the Lands Reforms Commission, the normal procedure had been to recover 6 per cent tax of Government valuation of lands.
The commission had been deprived of millions of rupees on account of annual recovery of 4 per cent of valuation of state lands leased to private firms and individuals for technical and agricultural purposes.