The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor, says government is in the process of rolling out a new policy on property rates for appropriate rates to be charged on every structure.

He said the process required multi-sectoral efforts and that his Ministry would collaborate with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to promulgate a legislative instrument that would ensure that land was considered a vital ingredient in evaluating the value of any property in the country.

“The current law that regulates property rates cannot include land as a variable or ingredient for valuation of property and so you value the property based on the structure and not the value of the land and I think it’s inequitable and unfair. Therefore the new policy would ensure equity in property valuation,” Mr Jinapor emphasized.

Additionally, a Committee was set up to take inventory of all state acquired lands and ensure that all vested lands were protected from encroachment.

Mr Jinapor announced this in Accra on Tuesday when the management of Lands Commission updated the media on its digital transformation programme to ensure efficient delivery of land services.

So far, with support from the German Development Cooperation (GIZ), Lands Commission had completed appraisal of property rates of 75 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) nationwide.

Mr Jinapor expressed government’s commitment to reforming the land administration system in the country by leveraging on technology to digitize all land records for efficient service delivery.

The Minister said government would work with the private sector in that endeavour and was of the belief that by the first quarter of next year, all the digitization interventions rolled out by the Commission would take shape.

Mr James Dadson, acting Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, in a presentation on the various reforms ongoing at the Commission, said it was working hard to address the myriad of challenges facing land administration in the country.

In that regard, he said, the Commission was putting measures in place to improve mapping and spatial data, production of digital based maps for accurate data collection, establishing a National Spatial Data Infrastructure to ensure that agencies that required land data had a reference point as well as ensuring that all manual land records were transmitted into digital one.

So far, 10 per cent of the manual land records in the Greater Accra Region had been digitized, Mr Dadson stated.

The Executive Secretary added that efforts were ongoing to decentralize land service delivery by opening district offices across the country.

To achieve the Commission’s digitization agenda, he said, it intended to build the capacity of its staff and improve corporate governance culture, saying that, digitization and modernization of land administration was a catalyst for developing all sectors of the Ghanaian economy.