NRC weighs proposal for first land bank

Poor management aggravates disputes

The National Reform Council (NRC) is contemplating a proposal to set up a land bank to offer public funding and credit, specifically for villagers facing landrelated issues.

The NRC will review the results of a study recently concluded by its land committee, which examined the land issues afflicting poor farmers. The committee proposed a bill for a land bank, touting it as a way to create fairness and sustainable ownership systems.

The land bank would will be directed by the Finance Ministry, said Kobsak Phutrakul, deputy chairman of the NRC’s committee on reform of natural resources management by communities.

One core responsibility of the land bank is to provide financial assistance to farmers on the verge of losing land they had put up as collateral for bank loans and could not repay, he said.

The land bank will also manage state land and privately owned land that has been left idle for a long time, and could purchase unused or abandoned plots of land for resale, he said.

The first priority of the bank is to help people who have lost their mortgaged land after failing to honour mortgage contracts, he said.

The land bank will receive initial funding of five billion baht, then generate more funds through issuing bonds guaranteed by the Finance Ministry, said Mr Kobsak.

In the medium term, the land bank will manage state land, and in the long term, it will create its own assets through buying parcels of land.

To ensure transparency in the land bank’s operations, the bank must follow four policies regarding land purchases.

First, after retrieving the land lost by individuals who defaulted on loans, the land owners or their heirs-at-law will be eligible to buy the land back through installments over a period of at least 10 years.

Secondly, state land owned and managed by the bank cannot be sold to a private party.

Thirdly, the land purchased by the bank will only be leased out to farmers or the needy, and is not to be sold to any private land holder.

Finally, any personnel with conflicts of interest in a certain land parcel are forbidden from managing the case.

The four main causes of land conflict, outlined in a report by the NRC’s committee entitled “Land Reform and Land Management”, will also guide the bank’s management.

The lack of unity in land management policy, a problem identified since at least 1932, is a root cause of many of the current land issues in Thailand, said the report.

The country has had 55 governments, each of which approached land management differently. Thailand has never had a uniform master plan to guide governments’ land management.

The lack of a reliable land database, particularly in mapping and value appraisal, is a key obstacle, said the report.

Different state organisations associated with handling land disputes use different maps, complicating issues and inhibiting the timely resolution of disputes, said the report.

Existing measures to control land use are ineffective, despite laws clearly demarcating and protecting forest reserves, concluded the report, which stressed encroachment as a classic example.

People encroach on protected land for farming even as large swaths of unused land, suitable for farming, sits idle, said the report.