Vanuatu Progress

Tangible progress has been made over the last 12 months on the Vanuatu Land Program, largely as a result of the support provided by the new Minister for Lands. A recent re-focusing of activities means the project can now better support land administration initiatives identified by the Minister of Lands as being critical to the development of Vanuatu. The Program will focus on supporting land administration activities which will also support future infrastructure development around Port Vila and Luganville as well as other economic development initiatives across the country through the provision of improved land administration practice and procedures in the areas of land registration, surveying and valuation.

By way of practical examples: with the Program support, the Department of Lands have removed a backlog of unregistered instruments (in excess of 6,000) and almost completed the updating of the Lease Registers. This has required the reprinting of in excess of 10,500 Lease Registers and the manual checking of all existing Lease Registers that are on file. This significant achievement will improve the transparency of the lease process and significantly reduce the time required to register a new lease.

A Document Tracking System (DTS) has been developed for the Land Registry Office and Document Tracking Systems are also being developed for survey, valuation and planning. The Document Tracking System has helped facilitate a streamlining of registry processes and enables staff and users of the land registry to track the progress of an application, increasing the transparency of the process.

This week new survey equipment arrived to help the government carry out efficient and accurate surveys. As well as procuring the equipment the Program is also providing government survey staff with a week’s intensive training in use of the new equipment. In conjunction with this initiative current cadastral surveying and plan presentation procedures are also being improved. These activities will be particularly valuable in facilitating the significant infrastructure projects planned around Port Vila.