DENR to push through with rationalization of land titling system

Too many overlapping agencies, laws, procedures and fees in the titling process is resulting to inefficiency in the land titling system and creates opportunities for graft and corruption.

This was the assessment made by the Land Administration and Management Project (LAMP) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

A project study found out that in the Philippines it can take up to three years to secure or transfer a land title and have it registered compared to Thailand where it only takes an average of two and half hours to register a land title.

Such difficulty in securing a title and the confusion over the procedures as well as too many unnecessary fees breeds corruption, the LAMP stated. Even worse, it said fake titles proliferate because of outdated and inconsistent land policies and laws and inefficient agencies.

A quick scan would show that there are a number of agencies involved in land management although mostly are attached to the DENR. These include the DENR's provincial and community environment offices or PENRO and CENRO, the DENR's Land Management Bureau, the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority which is also an attached agency of the DENR, the Land Registration Authority and Registry of Deeds in cities and provinces which are under the Department of Justice and which has projection maps of subdivisions and consolidated surveys of titled lands and records of all Torrens Titles within their territorial jurisdiction, the Department of Agrarian Reform, Bureau of Internal Revenue for payment of certain fees and local government units.

In Congress, there is a long pending bill to reform land administration by creating a single agency. The Land Administration Reform Act or LARA Bill proposes to merge all land administration agencies into a single Land Administration Authority. However, it has taken a backseat to other "political" measures.

Jose Manalad, president of the National Real Estate Association, said their organization is also pushing for a "Title Insurance" law so that legitimate title holders would be better protected if land title certificate is lost from unscrupulous individuals or syndicates who would try to cash in idle lands and sell it to unsuspecting buyers.