Grenada’s Land Registry Goes Digital

The investment made in the newly created Grenada Lands Agency permitted the digitization of maps and computerization of processes, with the bulk of some 170,000 registration documents from the 1930’s made available online as a customer service. To support job and small business creation, the Government also supported the development of entrepreneurial skills of population.

Challenge

Several agencies, with no efficient information sharing system, were involved in land registration. Citizens were required to spend time dealing with each agency. Land registries were done manually and kept in hard copies. The high humidity had damaged the documentation because of inappropriate location and poor condition of the Office of the State Registrar and inadequate conservation of material. Information technologies to create, keep, share, and retrieve information were not available. The opportunities for Grenadians were scarce. 

Approach

With the support of the World Bank, the Grenadian Government improved its public service delivery by setting up and modernizing the Grenada Lands Agency, upgrading its processes and technology, as well as digitizing services. Additionally, all departments that constituted the Grenada Lands Agency were connected through fiber-optic lines to allow for information sharing. The quality of land survey, registration, and spatial planning improved radically, benefitting citizens and businesses.

Results

The Grenada Public Sector Modernization project supported improvements in several key areas related to efficiency in public service delivery:

• The number of days needed to register a business and receive a company certificate declined from 10-20 to 1-2 days. Bills of sale are filled and registered in one day.
• The number of days to complete all property registration activities decreased from 77 days to 47 days.
• The number of days to register deeds decreased from 60 days to 30 days.

Bank Contribution

The Bank contributed to these achievements through a Technical Assistance Credit in the amount of US$3.5 million, of which US$3 million were disbursed.

Partners

The Project was financed by the World Bank. The key Government partners for this project were: the Ministry of Finance and the Department of Public Administration of the Cabinet Office of the Government.

Moving Forward

The ongoing Regional Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project, will support:

• Developing capacity for maintenance and upgrade of the information system for land management.
• Implementing a geodetic system and creating a National Cadaster.

The Government of Grenada will oversee and support the following activities:

• Integrating business processes of the land survey, physical planning, valuation, recording proprietors in the tax database, property registration and information search, and integrating respective information subsystems into one system.

Beneficiaries

The beneficiaries included the Ministry of Legal Affairs (responsible for Supreme Court Registry), the Inland Revenue Division of the Ministry of Finance (responsible for Land Valuation), the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Forestry, Fisheries, Public Utilities and Energy, the Ministry of Finance (responsible for physical planning), and the Grenada Investment Development Corporation. Ultimately the people of Grenada will benefit from more efficient and reliable services in land, property and business registration.