Turkey - Cadastre Modernization Project

Page 1 PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID) CONCEPT STAGE Report No.: AB3229 Project Name Land Registry and Cadastre Modernization Project Region EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA Sector Central government administration (100%) Project ID P106284 Borrower(s) TURKEY Implementing Agency Land Registry and Cadastre Agency (TKGM) Environment Category [ ] A [X] B [ ] C [ ] FI [ ] TBD (to be determined) Date PID Prepared July 12, 2007 Estimated Date of Appraisal Authorization March 20, 2008 Estimated Date of Board Approval May 22, 2008 1. Key development issues and rationale for Bank involvement 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 challenges that require to be addressed to ensure that the system modernizes to reach the same service level as in the European countries. There are still many of the Cadastre and Land Registry offices that 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. The most challenging aspect is that cadastral maps are still 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 the government applications. Furthermore, many of maps are out of date. In many localities the maps do not Page 2 correspond with the ground parcel sizes and shapes, by sometimes 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 one system in the country