BFC Club: Adopt a plan for public property disposal

About 4.8 million immovable properties are outside the cadastre records, the procedures themselves are ineffective, the taxation system is unfair, and property is managed irrationally in special procedures. Additionally, all property-legal issues are regulated through more than 40 regulations, which is why there is a clear need for codification and adoption of a single normative act.

At the meeting of the BFC Club, municipalities with a favorable business environment, NALED's new comprehensive reform study in this field was presented today, and the focus was on issues of public property.

- One of the key recommendations of the analysis is to establish a new mechanism for registration in the cadastre for 2.7 million objects that were not registered due to old and incomplete documentation, through the formation of special commissions, composed of legal professions that would work on their validation and verification. The analysis also states that it is necessary to establish a land bank for interventions in expropriation and commissation procedures and a new taxation model that would be aimed at those with large capital. Finally, the establishment of the eProstor platform for digitizing the management of urban plans is also expected - said Jasmina Radovanović, property and investment adviser at NALED.

When talking about public property, several challenges were observed such as determining the title holder, real estate records, management, disposal of state and local property and determining its value.

The study proposes to provide additional support to RGZ that would consider the legal basis for owner registration, introduce an infrastructure cadastre that would include the cadastre of lines and initiate changes to the Law on Primary Education, in order to enable smooth registration of primary school facilities in favor of the owner.

Also, it is necessary to adopt a plan and program of disposal and give clear guidelines for further management of public property, identify immovable properties that are not used and enter them into the state land fund and introduce eAuction for more transparent and efficient disposal of public property.

Currently, the largest number of users, both at the state and local level, do not record property values, or enter incorrect and arbitrary property values. For this reason, it was proposed to carry out a mass assessment of property values, in order to finally prepare the final account of the budget of the Republic of Serbia by the Treasury Administration, in which the values of the property side would be entered.

- A certain number of local self-governments have not registered the real estate they use, sometimes because they do not have enough staff or computers. It was definitely determined that such a system did not give a good result, and that is why we turned to RGZ to take over all the data related to the public property of the republic. We can filter that data according to any criteria and make certain decisions related to solving the problems of cities and municipalities - said Dragana Gođevac Obradović, Assistant Director of the Directorate for Property, and invited those present to contact them at any time in order to meet them in any problem they come across and think is unsolvable.

The latest Regulatory Index of Serbia was also briefly presented at the session, which is very important in the context of improving business conditions.

- A high-quality and predictable law-making system is in the great interest of local governments and business entities, which is why NALED initiated the preparation of this report in 2011. Although the most important regulations are made by the republic, cities and municipalities have great expertise on the way in which these issues need to be regulated and the data show that most of the regulations that are passed are implemented at the local level.

- One of the findings we would like to share is that we all need to focus more on law enforcement. Laws should be progressive, but we all benefit little from them if the by-laws are not at an adequate level. On the positive side, the regulatory burden on the economy that follows the implementation of the law has decreased and amounts to 2.95% of GDP - concluded Dušan Vasiljević, Competitiveness and Investments Director in NALED.

The session of the BFC Club was held with the support of the Swedish Agency for International Development (Sida) and the project "Public procurement and good management for greater competitiveness", within which the Study of comprehensive reform of property-legal relations and the Regulatory Index of Serbia were prepared.