Govt to accelerate land title issuance

JAKARTA (JP): The government has issued a decree to help it in its struggle to complete the issuance of land titles for 75 million plots across the country.

State Minister of Agrarian Affairs Soni Harsono said Government Decree No. 24/1997, to become effective in October, is an amendment to the 1961 decree.

It is expected to provide legal and operational basis for the government's campaign to complete the title issuance process during the next 25 years, he said.

Eighteen million plots of land have been issued titles in the past 35 years using the 1961 decree that was derived from the 1960 Agrarian Law.

In a seminar on land titles yesterday, Soni said there are 55 million plots of land in Indonesia, which may grow to 75 million through land division and inheritance.

The government has launched both "massive systematic as well as sporadic" efforts in the issuance of land titles over the last five years to speed up the process, he said.

This includes a World Bank-sponsored pilot project which began two years ago in seven regencies and mayoralties in West Java and Central Java. During the first year, the project issued titles for 201,932 plots of land.

"Land titles are important to curb land disputes, which mostly stem from unclear land ownership," said Soni, who is also chairman of the National Land Agency.

Through the systematic title-issuing project, the government plans to complete by 1999 the issuance of titles for 1.2 million plots in 14 mayoralties and regencies in West Java, Jakarta, Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java.

Through its sporadic issuance of titles -- where individuals register land rights through public notary and land agencies -- the government expects to issue titles for as many as 800,000 plots of land, Soni said.

"The long-term target is to finish issuing titles for every plot in Indonesia in 25 years," Soni said.

Soni said the new decree would accelerate the issuance of titles because it would "reaffirm, clarify and simplify the procedures for the collection of land ownership data".

Soni said, however, that a good law was useless if it was poorly implemented.

He concurred with another speaker at the seminar, former justice Adi Andojo Soetjipto, that it was the poor implementation of many good laws that caused the failure of the legal system to meet public expectations. (25/aan)