Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 08, 2020 (SKNIS): Close to six thousand (6000) lands in St. Kitts and Nevis have been registered over a period of 18 months since work started at the Land Registry in January 2018.
“We have been able in the last 18 months to be able to register more than 4000 titles in the Land Registry when it comes to St. Kitts and some neigh 2000 titles in Nevis across land and so this has been very significant,” said Honourable Vincent Byron Jr., Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs on Tuesday’s (July 07) edition of ‘Leadership Matters’, a virtual forum on ZIZ TV.
Minister Byron said that government is moving towards the digitization of the Land Registry adding that it is one of the main areas that the government is very proud of.
“Apart from being able to develop as it was a process by which we can register much more quickly, we are in the process of digitizing the whole process to make it more efficient and effective,” he said. “One of the things we are able to do and are doing at the current time is to be able to improve the way in which we identify lands in St. Kitts and Nevis. We have used drones to have flyovers and so we are in the process of being able to identify various plots of lands to be able to ensure that the whole process of land registration improves significantly.”
He added that the government engaged a US company in early 2020 to assist in developing a cadastral mapping of all the lands in St. Kitts and Nevis.
The National Land Registry was established in 2017. Attorney-General Byron said that establishing a dedicated Land Registry is essential to the ease of doing business and critical to economic activity.
“We have set up and established a new dedicated Land Registry that allows for matters relating to land titles to be processed much more quickly than they had been in the past. This is critical in terms of economic activity as people need to approach banks to raise funds, you need to be able to have titles to your land and property to use them as mortgage instruments so that we can move forward in our development of our country,” Ministry Byron said.
The Land Registry, which is now separated from the High Court works closely with the Inland Revenue Departments in St. Kitts and Nevis, the Lands and Surveys Department, and generally, the Ministries of Sustainable Development, and the Ministries of Communications and Physical Planning.
