Strata titles are the start of a wide-ranging agenda of land reforms to help Papua New Guineans access the value of their land.

Minister for Lands and Physical Planning, John Rosso. Credit: BAI

Minister for Lands and Physical Planning, John Rosso, has announced that new strata title reforms will be hitting parliament as early as March.

Speaking at a Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce breakfast, the minister said that he hoped all of the new land reforms would help to provide some certainty for business, as well as opportunities for locals to make their land more ‘bankable’.

A strata title allows for the division of land into units or segments owned by individuals but with an allocation for common areas that are the joint responsibility of all the unit holders.

‘It makes things a little bit easier and simpler and in that sense it is a good thing.’

‘That will be brought to parliament this year around the March sitting,’ Rosso said. ‘I will bring that to government to ensure that it gets passed.’ He added that the new laws would enable landholders to on-sell their properties and would be ‘helpful to business in my view’.

The new laws will be based on those used in the Australian Capital Territory.

Dentons’ Stephen Massa. Credit: Dentons

Positive response

Stephen Massa, Partner and Head of PNG office at Dentons law firm, says while the changes may take a bit of administration, from a business point of view the introduction of strata title was overwhelmingly positive.

‘It makes things a little bit easier and simpler and in that sense it is a good thing,’ says Massa. ‘In fact, any reform of land in PNG is a good thing because it is all a bit of a basket case, having had so many changes over the decades.’

Massa added that basing the new laws on the ACT ‘makes sense because the state lease regime is based on the ACT’ and that the move to strata is a natural one.

Land registry needed

Moses Liu, CEO of the National Development Bank, notes that customary land cannot currently be used as security for the purpose of obtaining loans, so reforms to the system are welcomed.

‘These reforms are designed to help PNG people who own land to make land available but at the same time protect their interest’

‘The let-down has been the security of the actual titles, with duplicate titles, and if they can get that in order that will be good,’ Liu says.

The minister also spoke about the huge loss in revenue due to the current paper systems of land titles, which allowed for fraudulent practices and the minimisation of stamp duty. Rosso said that the government collected around K30 million in stamp duty last year, when the figure should have been closer to K80 or K100 million.

‘The process is cumbersome and it is not being done properly – that is why the government misses out on a lot of revenue from genuine taxpayers and people who pay stamp duty; it’s just not collated properly,’ Rosso said.

Rosso said that serial numbers and watermarks had already been ordered from the Australian government to help alleviate fraud. He added that the availability of land in the cities was a big issue and hoped that business would be a big winner from the changes.

‘The business community is an integral part of our nation building and the ability to have cheap, available land is becoming harder and harder so these reforms are designed to help PNG people who own land to make land available but at the same time protect their interest so that business and industry can grow,’ he said.