Lands and Physical Planning Cabinet Secretary Farida Karoney has said that Ardhisasa land management system will increase revenue collection.
Speaking during the 6th African Tax Research Network (ATRN) Congress held virtually yesterday, Karoney said that the reform process at the lands registry engenders the values of integrity, transparency, accountability, and equality with respect to land transactions, access to information, and administration of fiscal politics in the context of land-based taxation regimes.
She said that digitasing land transactions will make it easy to document the rights and obligations of land and property owners as well as investors in the lands sector.
“The digitalisation of the land and property market system presents the opportunity for tax administration regimes to exponentially expand the tax-bases, enhance revenue collection, improve efficiency in enforcement and compliance, reduce tax evasion, reduce the cost of tax collection and other administrative structures and improve tracking, reporting, fore-casting and decision making,” she remarked.
In addition, she said digitisation of land records will reduce cost of tax compliance, and reduce incidents of tax errors.
According to Karoney, the digitalisation of the property regime in the country is expanding the formal land transaction regime to larger parts of cities and urban areas which hitherto, were excluded from the tax base.
Further, she noted that digitalisation of land records and transactions will improve integration between the Ministry of Lands and other public institutions hence improve efficiency and service delivery.
“Some of the benefits of digitalisation of land records and land transactions are improved integration with other public sector authorities, judicial organs, the banking /financial sector agencies, investigative and tax administration regimes, certainty of land ownership, security of tenure, reduction of land disputes and improved land conveyancing.
“The system, which is part of Kenya e-Government Strategy 2004, will also ensure cost effectiveness, timely delivery of public services and enhancement of the ease of doing business in the Country,” she stated.
Through National Land Information Management System (NLIMS), the government is developing the National Cadastre which will provide a digital platform on which data relating to all land parcels in geo-referenced format will be stored for ease of access and sharing.
With integration of the digital records and the data relating to registration of persons and businesses, it will became very easy to expand the tax base through capture of more properties into the system.
“The digital data on the land records will be integrated across all land sector service delivery areas including land administration, land use planning, surveying and mapping, valuation, land adjudication, rating, land rent and land registration,” karoney said.
Ardhisasa aims to digitalise land transactions and make it easy to document the rights and obligations of land and property owners as well as investors in the lands sector.
Implementation of NLIMS marks a shift from manual paper-based systems that are susceptible to wear and tear of land records, time wastage, corruption, low productivity, poor integration with other public sector agencies and distortion of land market operations.
As part of the land reform agenda, the government implemented Ardhsasa aimed at enhancing cost effectiveness, integration of government decision-marking processes, timely delivery of public services and enhancement of the ease of doing business.
