Lands CS Jacob Kaimenyi. [Photo/ebrutv.co.ke]
County governments are set to raise revenue collected from property rates once reforms at the Ministry of Lands to digitize registry records at a cost of Sh17 billion are completed. Reforms at the Ministry are part of the roadmap towards digitization, mapping, and completion of the national spatial data infrastructure.
The changes are aimed at reforming and modernizing the land record management systems, mapping, and registration of land title deeds.
“With a digital database, we will secure land documents with specific features hard to forge at a cost of Sh17 billion,” says Lands and Physical Planning Cabinet Secretary, Prof Jacob Kaimenyi.
Digitisation of land registries has come as big relief to surveyors and geologists whose job is to identify underground natural resources, such as minerals. This had earlier impacted negatively on the development of counties because of their inability to harness the potential of minerals.
Nairobi County government is a beneficiary of the reforms that have since witnessed property records jump from 170,000 to over 230,000 even before the process is completed, according to Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning, Dr. Nicholas Muraguri.
“Nairobi has witnessed a 30 percent increase in transactions since the integrated system linked to the Ministry headquarters kicked off. There is the less human contact which is a means of fighting corruption,” Dr. Muraguri told a regional forum of surveyors held in Nairobi recently.
County revenues have grown to over Sh35 billion shillings annually but counties are still highly dependent on the revenue shares of the national government. A Nairobi county government budget review outlook paper 2016 says in the financial year 2015/2016, total revenue from both internal and external sources amounted to Sh.25.1 billion against a revised budget of Sh29 billion.