Govt. to introduce online property registration service
Aiming for quick wins to move up the 2019 Ease of Doing Business rankings of the World Bank, the Sri Lankan government will be introducing online property search and registration services for the city of Colombo, while other regions would be left waiting for another two years.
“The World Bank evaluation usually starts from March each year and ends in June, and whatever we do to improve the situation, we will have to do it visibly in this time to get marks. Not only to get marks I mean, but in the broader concept to improve the situation related to land,” Surveyor General P.M.P Udayakantha said.
He was speaking at a media briefing held in Colombo this week to give an update on the progress of the land registration task force, which is one of the eight task forces established by the government to move up to the top 70 ranks by the 2020 Ease of Doing Business edition compared to the 111th position held in the 2018 rankings.
He said that the task force has by now managed to cut down the time taken to browse through deeds and register a property by adhering to the existing 9 processes from 51 days to 26 days, and after the digitization comes into effect, properties could be registered within 5 days by following one or two processes.
The ultimate objective is to set up a single online interface, which could link together all services related to registering a property, including payment options and local governments, according to Udayakantha, which would hopefully improve Sri Lanka’s last registration ranking from 157th out of 190 countries.
However, he admitted that since the World Bank evaluates each country’s largest commercial city for the rankings, the new services for searching the status of properties online and registering them will only be provided in Colombo at the start.
“Since Colombo is used for evaluation purposes we are focusing on Colombo,” he said.
Those wanting to grab the opportunities outside Colombo; near the Chinese-owned Hambantota Port, the many planned investment zones, or the numerous tourism hotspots, would have to wait until 2020 to enjoy the benefits, even if the World Bank ranks the country better over the next two evaluation cycles.