Government program aims to title 3.4 million plots of land

Santo Domingo.- Given the country’s 1.8 million urban lots and 1.6 million farm plots without titles, president Danilo Medina yesterday ordered massive titling of Government lands, especially those on which land reform and housing projects have been established.

Decree 624-12, which creates the State Lands Titling Commission, was announced in a National Palace press conference, where Agriculture minister Luis Ramon Rodriguez revealed that the Dominican Agrarian Institute (IAD) has 115, 000 registered plots of land, but only 15,000 have their titles.

The decree cites the project’s important, noting that 74% of the country’s farmers have no titles.

Rodriguez said the government’s projection is to title around 150,000 properties for the same number of beneficiaries, and the first will be deliver in three months.

The commission

The Presidency’s Chief of staff and the minister of Agriculture head the Commission, together with the heads of the IAD, the National Assets Registry, the National Housing Institute, the Agricultural Bank, the State Sugar Council and the Dominican Agribusiness Board (JAD).

To obtain a title, people should have been living and working on the land for more than five years.