KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Government will be allocating an additional $1 billion for land titling during the 2024/2025 financial year.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness made the announcement while delivering the keynote address at a land-titling ceremony for 130 beneficiaries under the National Land Agency (NLA) Systematic Land Registration Programme (SLRP), at the New Life Church of God in Bog Walk, St Catherine, on Tuesday.

He said that land titling “is absolutely important for the development of this country”.

“The ambition of this Government is to ensure that every Jamaican who owns or occupies a piece of land goes through the formal process to determine whether they can be legally ascribed a title of ownership, and that is what we are committing to do,” Holness noted.

The SLRP, which began in 2021, seeks to assist landowners who have been in open, undisturbed, and undisputed possession of their land for 12 years or more, to claim ownership of such land through the systematic land-registration process.

This is a process where the Government systematically surveys land plots in specific geographic areas, collects the relevant documents and registers land titles.

Representatives from the NLA visit the declared communities to adjudicate land rights, which involves conducting interviews, surveying land parcels, processing applications, listing the names of persons claiming an interest in the land and preparing and issuing certificates of title in the landowners’ names.

The objective is to increase the level of land registration in Jamaica.

The Government will advance the entire cost for the legal and surveying fees, which individuals will be required to repay after the certificate of title is issued.

To date, almost 9,000 certificates of title of a targeted 12,000, have been delivered.

– JIS