The Algarve’s land registration pilot project ran out of time and money with funds being spent on ‘other projects’.
The scheme to register land and property on a government database is expected to have cost close to €17 million, well below the €25 million allocated by the EU, but is on hold as because the initiative has run over the time allotted and part of the funds were “released for other initiatives”.
The pilot scheme involved Loulé, São Brás de Alportel and Tavira in the Algarve and Oliveira do Hospital, Paredes, Penafiel and Seia. The project was launched by the Directorate General of Territory (DGT) in 2013.
The general director of the DGT says he needs another €4.5 million to complete the task which involves the integration and verification of all the data and the geo-referenced properties. Then each property will be allocated a special identification number.
"It is an experimental model that was tested in seven councils across the country and we just have to prove that it is possible to do the work at a lower cost,” said the DGT's Rui Alves.
So far, according to Alves, the project has collected data from 65-70% of the territory in the seven council areas involved in the pilot scheme.
The second stage involves the assessment of all the objections and claims that have been received from property owners and the confirmation of the existing data before launching the final version of a new land registry for the pilot areas.
There now is no planned end date as the project has overrun and the money has been spent. It is up to the DGT to find the budget to finish the work as there was more than adequate funding available, some of which mysteriously has been diverted.
In the Loulé council area, 72,875 rural and urban buildings have been registered covering about 58,000 hectares, nearly 77% of the territory.
The teams responsible for the project have received about 3,500 complaints in the Loulé area and the detection and resolution of land disputes is an important step that will give more confidence to the Directorate General of Territory, land owners and the real estate market.
The president of Loulé council, Vítor Aleixo, was satisfied with the accomplished work, saying it is a "useful tool" for managing the land and it helps the council’s work in revising the local Land Master Plan (PDM) which is in progress.
Nothing had been done in Portugal since 1990 that helps work out who owns what. Many land disputes have arisen as a result.
Rui Alves is confident that the methodology tested in the pilot project has the potential to be applied at national level, after having made some corrections now the system has been tested in the field.
Comments
That - like Greece - so much of Portugal's land is still not owner specified. And that this state of affairs has even now barely begun to get sorted?
Surely it should be simple enough to aggregate the owner unknown land and distribute maps around? Within Portugal and elsewhere in the Portuguese speaking world. Spend the money on publicity.
Telling people to check and prove their landholdings with a deadline of say 3 years. free of charge to a special fast track court. After this time the land is nationalised and sold off.