Project is progressing well
The Norwegian funded project with the Kosovo Property Agency (KPA), in charge of protecting property rights of displaced persons, is progressing well. The overall objective of the project is to make field works more efficient and safe.
During January the IT-system for tracking and monitoring movements of KPA field teams has been installed. GPS devices for tracking and reporting the position of the field teams has been installed in 50 cars. A map based information
system has been installed at KPA headquarters, allowing a central unit to continuously monitor the position of field teams.
The Kosovo Cadastre Agency has agreed to deliver orthophotos and cadastral maps for use in the KPA tracking and monitoring
system. 20 field teams have received equipment for navigation using the orthophotos as background to the GPS position. New
orthophotos for the entire territory of Kosovo was planned for 2008, but has been postponed to 2009 because the weather did
not permit aerial photographing in the autumn of 2008.
Representatives of countries supporting land administration in Kosovo met in Pristina during January to discuss the follow
up to the recently prepared Business Plan. Donors had earlier agreed that a much stronger political commitment to the sector
would be conditionality for continued support. At the Steering Committee meeting the responsible minister stated that the
Government had agreed to the business plan being the platform for development of land administration in Kosovo, and that the
Kosovo Cadastre Agency would receive more staff and better funding.
A working group has been set up to make a detailed implementation plan, inter alia, to identify prioritized activities for
the respective donor and for the World Bank. Statens kartverk will propose a Norwegian funded program for an amount of about
15 mill NOK over three years. A critical issue is to complete the first registration of buildings and apartments to facilitate
that these can be used as collateral for bank loans. The absence of a building and apartments register is currently hampering
very much the development of the banking sector in Kosovo.
Information system for Kosovo Property Agency
Since July 2007 SK is involved in the implementation of the project in Kosovo aimed at the development of a Geographic Information
System (GIS), which provided Kosovo Property Agency (KPA) with an electronic mapping system accessible on the Internet and
enabled KPA to catalogue the list of properties that are subject of a claim. The beneficiaries of the GIS are the claimants,
property rights holders, local government, UN mission in Kosovo, and other stakeholders.
- Currently Phase 1 - a web-mapping application dealing with property objects, is under implementation in the Property Agency.
- Phase 2 has a specific task to establish a vehicle tracking system integrated in the web-mapping application. Kosovo Property Agency
has a fleet of vehicles that numbers around 50, and primarily are used for the field works. The system will allow to display
and record full travel history of the vehicles. It will be implemented for all KPA vehicles in Kosovo, Serbia and Skopje in
Macedonia. The supplier of all necessary equipment and training will be selected in one week.
- Recently Phase 3 of the project – Orthophoto production, has been initiated. It is planned to cover the entire country with a new orthophoto
of 40 or 50 cm resolution. In addition, an optional procurement is orthophoto for one or more urban areas with 10 or 20 cm
resolution. The procurement method – a two-step negotiation procedure, includes pre-qualification. So far there are 10 companies
applied for pre-qualification, and in a matter of one week a decision on what companies are selected and invited to place
their project offers and price bids, will be announced.
Land issues central to Kosovo independence
The laws adopted by the Kosovo Parliament for the independence builds largely on the so-called Athisaari plan. It contains
several issues aiming at giving the Serb minority better control over their assets in Kosovo.
Public authority, including maintaining the cadastral and land registration records will be further delegated to municipalities.
It will be made seven new municipalities having a larger percentage of Serb population. All of these should establish cadastre
and land registration offices. The existing cadastre has to be reorganised, including moving and splitting cadastral zones
to fit with new municipal borders. Properties belonging to the Orthodox church shall be protected by 100 meter security non-building
zones, to be surveyed, demarcated and recorded in the cadastre. It imposes a lot of work to the already overstretched Kosovo
Cadastre Agency.
The donors currently supporting the land sector in Kosovo, i.e. the World Bank, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany and Norway, met
with the Kosovo cadastral authorities in Pristina on 21 to 23 April to discuss a continued concerted aid program. The state
cadastral agency has only about 30 professional staff, and lacks capacity to deal with the challenges. A number of pilot cadastre
reconstruction projects have been blocked for months because of too little capacity to do quality control. That the municipal
cadastre and land registration offices belong to the municipal administration represents another major challenge, with limited
power for direct supervision by the state agency.
All donors currently involved with this sector stated that they are willing to continue their support. However, it was underlined
that the Kosovo Government should come up with a clear vision for the land sector developments, as a platform for further
foreign assistance. It was agreed that improved legislation, systems and training needed for transparent individual transactions
with real property, should be prioritized before any new projects with systematic updating of parcel maps and ownership records
are started.