Property Rights & Land Titling Project, Lao PDR

The Project is now in its fifth year of Phase 2 and there are encouraging signs that the host organisation, the National Land Management Authority, is committed to continuing the project into the next decade. Initially they will seek an extension of Phase 2 and then a third phase! This is good news for our technical assistance team, as we are in the last eight months of our inputs. Although the Bank-funded project continues until 30 June 2009, LEI’s contract with AusAID finishes in November 2008.

The Lao Project Director, in recent meetings with AusAID, re-iterated the project advantages and conveyed the intention of the Lao government to extend the benefits of a secure title to all parts of Laos. And as this report is being drafted, NLMA has officially requested the Australian Ambassador for an extension of TA until the end of 2011.

At this stage of the project, besides the Team Leader, the only international consultant that we have on the ground is Kate. She is working in a different environment with the CES activities originally under the DoL having recently been transferred to the Land Natural Resources Information Research Centre. Senior managers of NLMA recently participated in a study tour to Australia. Our Australian Project Director Chris Lunnay and our Project Administrator Ciara Crowley were the local facilitators and ensured that the team made use of the opportunity to learn about the workings of the Queensland and NSW land registries as well as learning more about Australia! The team brought back many valuable lessons.

Some managers will also travel to Cambodia in March, for an exchange between the two projects. Our advisers continue to support the major expansion of the project. The government is committed to extending land titling to all parts of the country as rapidly as possible, and as a result, we are now working in five new provinces. Training of adjudication teams has also started in the remaining three provinces.

Advisers have a fairly extensive program of travel to the 17 provinces over the remaining eight months, to ensure that regional activities are appropriately implemented and that adjudication and land office operations are sustainable. It is almost time to think in terms of regional TA bases, similar to LAMP in the Philippines! Although it seems the last supervision mission has just ended, we are now gearing up for the next mission, scheduled for June 2008. Although administratively demanding, the missions are valuable milestones in the life of the project as they focus on resolving key technical and management roadblocks. More in the next newsletter.

Provided by Steve McFadzean