PH faces land governance crisis — Dominguez
The Philippine is facing a land governance crisis due to the government’s “obsolete” policies on properties, the Department of Finance (DOF) said yesterday.
At the Conference on Sustainable Governance, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III raised the urgency to overhaul the country’s obsolete land governance policies to prevent severe case of poor land administration.
Dominguez noted the government should start working on programs aimed at preventing Metro Manila’s “urban nightmare” from spreading all over the country.
“We are truly facing a land governance crisis and must respond decisively to this,” the finance chief said.
Dominguez said that unless the government acts swiftly to upgrade its land governance policies, other areas of the country will suffer the same fate as that of Metro Manila.
“Metro Manila presents us with the most severe case of poor land governance. This is an urban nightmare, a metropolis that grew without planning,” Dominguez said at the conference organized by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
“Right now, high land costs prevent us from acquiring property to build schools and hospitals. Right-of-way has become a costly proposition for public works. No provisions were put in place for road widening,” he added.
Dominguez said the DOF has been doing its part in “bringing coherence” to the country’s land governance by moving to reduce estate taxes to encourage the documentation of land assets and free them up for productive use.
Moreover, Dominguez said the DOF is also encouraging local government units to update their land valuations as a measure not just to raise revenues but also to discourage owners of prime land in their respective localities from keeping these assets idle or non-productive.
He acknowledged that policies on land governance are "in urgent need of updating," with the proposed National Land Use Plan "sitting in the legislative mill, with little indication it will be passed into law any time soon."