Land owners will from next financial year apply and search for title deeds online in a deal reached between the government and the Kenya Private Sector Alliance last Thursday.
In a closed door meeting held at State House, the government and Kepsa agreed that the digitisation of the land registry that started in May last year, be extended to other counties from July. The digitisation is currently being piloted in Nairobi and Mombasa.
Under the deal, the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development committed to work closely with Kenya Property Developers Association on a programme that will see phased roll out of the Land Information Management System.
“It was agreed that a designed programme will be ready by June 30 for submission to Treasury to facilitate roll-out across our land registry,” KEPSA said in a statement issued after the fourth round-table meeting chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The countrywide roll out of LIMS will be preceded by enactment of crucial bills relating to the highly analogue land sector before the August 27 constitutional deadline – five years after the constitution was promulgated.
The ministry said it will finalise the draft Evictions and Resettlement, Physical Planning and Community Land Bills by Thursday next week after Principal secretary Mariamu El Maawy successfully asked to be given two weeks to fine-tune the bills for Cabinet approval.
The fast tracking of the long pending National Land Policy is now set for early next month after a 30-day period was agreed. The same timeline was also set for necessary fine tuning to the equally important Land Registration Act.
The alignment of the legal framework to the constitution will pave way for the full digitisation of land and property transactions under the LIMS system.
The lengthy process in registering a property including land has been a drag foot to Kenya’s ease of doing business index conducted annually by the World Bank.
In the last World Bank’s ‘Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency’ report published last October and based on data as of June 1, 2014, issuance of construction permits posted worst reforms over the previous year.
Acting Lands secretary in the ministry Peter Kahuho said the ongoing digitisation of land registry would reduce property registration time from about 73 days through nine procedures to 14 days over the next one year.
“We are creating a single application form for all transactions where one will no longer require various forms when transferring or acquiring property,” he said in a recent interview on March 17.
Kahuho said an average 750 applications are already being processed daily under the ongoing pilot phase in Nairobi and Mombasa.
