Govt to accelerate land title issuance

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)