WASHINGTON, May 11, 2010―The World Bank today approved US$12.1 million of Additional Financing for the FYR Macedonia Real Estate Cadastre and Registration Project (RECRP). The Additional Financing will help the government continue its reforms in real estate cadastre and build on the excellent results achieved.
“Everyone agrees that an efficient cadastre system and developed land markets are key factors in attracting foreign and domestic investments,” said Victoria Stanley, head of the World Bank team designing the project. “The project has helped complete the real estate cadastre and built the institutional capacity of the national cadastre and registration agency. We now have an opportunity to build on these results and take the next step.”
The Additional Financing will help finance digitizing the existing cadastre maps and plans and provide this graphical information to citizens, the private sector, and the public sector over the internet. It will improve the accuracy and efficiency of surveying by completing and upgrading the national geodetic reference network, and will support the government to prepare a strategy and begin implementation of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), (1) a key underpinning for e-government services. The Additional Financing would also finance the modernization of the work process in the Authority for Legal and Property Affairs, which will enable it to provide its services to the citizens in a more efficient way.
With the establishment of the nationwide Real Estate Cadastre, the priorities of the government and the Agency for Real Estate Cadastre (AREC) are shifting to further enhancement of registration and cadastre services, improving data quality, and increased access to data via the internet.
The major bottlenecks for these improvements are the paper format of the cadastre maps and graphic data, and the delivery of this information still in paper format, and also the incomplete and outdated national geodetic reference infrastructure, which hampers the accuracy and efficiency of cadastral and land surveys.
Based on the analysis done under the Land Policy Component, the government had recognized the need for strengthening state land management and a relevant state body involved, and has requested that the Authority for Legal and Property Affairs (ALPA) within the Ministry of Finance be included under the Additional Financing.
Since FYR Macedonia joined the World Bank in 1994, commitments total more than US$800 million.
(1) NSDI is a framework of policies, criteria, standards, institutional arrangements, technologies, data and people which enables the sharing and effective usage of geographic information. The goal of establishing NSDI is to reduce duplication of effort among agencies, improve quality and reduce costs related to geographic information, to make geographic data more accessible to the public, to increase the benefits of using available data, and to establish key partnerships with region, cities, academia and the private sector to increase data availability.
