Turkey - Cadastre Modernization Project

Page 1 PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID) APPRAISAL STAGE Report No.: AB3479 Project Name Cadastre Modernization Project Region EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA Sector Central government administration (100%) Project ID P106284 Borrower(s) TURKEY Implementing Agency Republic of Turkey Turkey Land Registry and Cadastre Agency Turkey Environment Category [ ] A [X] B [ ] C [ ] FI [ ] TBD (to be determined) Date PID Prepared November 20, 2007 Date of Appraisal Authorization January 10, 2008 Date of Board Approval May 22, 2008 1. Country and Sector Background Turkey has a long history of protection of property rights. More than 95% of land in Turkey is mapped and registered, and the Turkish Land Registry and Cadastre Agency (TKGM) plans to complete the registration by 2008. Nevertheless, significant improvements are needed to fully modernize the TKGM and bring it to European standards. In the last years, Turkey has experienced an economic growth with an average rate of 7.5% per annum since 2001. The housing and construction sector has been very active and is growing at a 7% rate. In major cities, the residential, industrial and commercial construction is taking place at a rapid pace and all support services, including property surveys and subdivision, are stretched to keep-up with increasing demand. Most secondary city areas have grown in size, some by at least 50 % into rural areas in the last decade (e.g., Konya). The resulting demand for cadastral survey services from both the public and private sectors continues to grow. While the Turkish Cadastre and Registration system is considered one of the most effective in the region as registration of property transaction is done within one day in many offices, there are still many shortcomings that require to be addressed to ensure that the system modernizes to reach the same service level as in the European countries. Still, many of the Cadastre and Land Registry offices rely on manual systems, with old documents, some of them dating back to the Ottoman times. The TAKBIS system (the computerized Land Registry Software) runs in only 140 out of the 1000 offices. There are plans to expand the computerization to other offices in the coming years. Page 2 The most challenging aspect is that cadastral maps continue to be in a paper format, vary in accuracy and consistency, and are not linked to the national datum. This makes it difficult to support E-government applications as cadastre maps serve as a base mapping for many government applications. Furthermore, in many localities maps are out of date and do not correspond with the ground parcel sizes and shapes, differing sometimes by up to 10 meters. This situation resulted from the varying quality of surveying technologies used in the last 100 years and the lack of required resources and regulatory means to keep the cadastre up to date and to be truly representative of the realities on the ground. Over time, several different geographical coordinate systems for the cadastre have been used in Turkey, ranging from none 100 years ago, then local systems, and finally, in the last 20 years, to a national coordinate system. Coordinates are central to digital spatial information systems, and at present, there is no standard system in the country