Land Administration, Valuation and Information Management System (LAVIMS), Mauritius

Name of Client: Ministry of Housing and Lands, Government of Mauritius

Bhutel is the prime local partner in the consortium headed by Infoterra (UK) which has been awarded the contract for the implementation of the Land Administration, Valuation and Information Management System (LAVIMS) project.

Land administration is of significant importance to any government and the information infrastructure components related to land support a wide range of governmental functions. These include ownership of land, taxation of land, land use regulation, utility maintenance and construction, environmental compliance, and many others. Land administration functions involve a number of disciplines, ranging from law, valuation, surveying, land registration and land planning. The technologies that support such functions are complex, for example land and geographic information systems and the global positioning system, and are changing rapidly also.

The LAVIMS project is the first and major part of an ongoing reform program that will deliver the essential building blocks for a modern Land Administration and Management System (LAMS) for the Republic of Mauritius.

LAVIMS aims to achieve three major outcomes:

The whole integrated and supported by an appropriate Information Management System (IMS).

The LAVIMS consulting project reflects the complexities and multi-disciplinary approach required of a modern land administration system. Design and development incorporates institutional, legislative and technical considerations, utilising a multiple of disciplines, including photogrammetry, remote sensing, GPS, GIS, surveying, land law, valuation, public administration and information systems. The ideal contractor team to implement the LAVIMS project could incorporate government agency expertise, academic expertise, and private sector expertise, to cover the span of disciplines required.

Responsibility for reform of the land administration system is shared by the Ministry for Housing and Lands (MHL) and the Ministry for Finance and Economic Development (MOFED), Government of Mauritius (GOM). These two ministries have jointly created the LAVIMS project.

The Project's overall scope is limited to the Island of Mauritius. The major components of LAVIMS to be undertaken by the project are:

• A market value based Valuation and the preparation of a Valuation List of all properties excluding those used for agricultural and public purposes.

• Generation of a complete cadastre, to be current and comprehensive in identifying all cadastral land parcels, their areas (extent) and abuttal. It is to be derived by a compilation from existing sources of land survey information, or possibly by the resurvey all land parcels depending on time and cost constraints.

• A modified Deeds registration system that records all ownership and rights in land, enhanced to recognize land parcels and to accommodate a functioning land administration system.

• An IMS that provides for managing and sharing data and land information.

• The information components of LAVIMS are to be integrated through the IMS, linked such that enquiries in one IMS sub-system can provide simple and convenient access to other project datasets, or the transfer of information contained in any or all other sub-systems.

CADASTRE

The broad LAVIMS Cadastral System reform objectives are to:

• Generate a complete cadastre of all private and State lands over the Island of Mauritius.

• Relate all points and polygons in the cadastral framework to the geodetic datum of Mauritius.

• Provide a system of uniquely identifying every land parcel on the Island of Mauritius.

• Provide a system of uniquely registering and identifying all plans and diagrams of cadastral survey within the office of Chief Surveyor of MHL.

• Integrate with the deeds registration and valuation systems to provide a one-to-one correlation between each cadastral lot, lot number, plan or diagram of survey, deed, owner, street address and the property valuation.

• Reform workflows and business processes within the Chief Surveyor's office to provide for registration of new surveys and plans and diagrams, examination and approval of new surveys and examination and approval of the cadastral framework provided under LAVIMS.

• Improve the Chief Surveyor's capacity to eventually provide information to its stakeholders on line.

VALUATION

The GOM requires a valuation survey and a valuation of properties within the boundaries of the Island of Mauritius based on market value as defined by the International Valuation Standards Committee and the compilation of a Valuation List in accordance with the Local Government Act which will be amended in due course to include the definition and basis of market value.

There is at present no national database of market values of properties and the compilation of a National Valuation List will provide a comprehensive accurate and updated database of property ownership and values.

Among the properties that are required to be valued are those that could be subject to:

(i) A value based National Residential Property Tax (NRPT) assessment, and/or

(ii) A local government rate, assuming that all land on the Island was subject to local government rating.

Land used for agricultural purposes and public services infrastructure is excluded. As part of an integrated valuation/cadastre/registration reform, the methodologies employed in undertaking the valuation are expected to complement other LAVIMS Project components. This particularly applies to field inspections and land/property data collection.

DEEDS REGISTRATION (DIGITISATION)

The LAVIMS Registration reform objectives are to:

• Provide convenient access to deeds records for LAVIMS Government Agencies, the LAVIMS Valuation team and Cadastral compilation team through digitisation of 30 years of deeds records.

•Integrate registration with the cadastre through the introduction of land parcels as the primary entity in the registration process and records systems.

• Provide for all new Deeds concerning ownership or interests in land to be registered against the relevant land parcel identified in the cadastre.

• Capture of all links from live deeds of ownership to the relevant land parcels

• From implementation, commence recording a history or chain of deeds ownership and interests in individual land parcels, with the capability of backcapture if provided by the Notary on a Deed Summary Form.

• Efficiently sending sales information to the Valuation System and sending and receiving check valuations from the VD.

• Reform workflows and business process within the RGD to bring efficiencies to the registration of Deeds and documents and

• Improve RGD's capacity to eventually provide information to its Stakeholders on line.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

By June 2010 the IMS, supported with a relevant ICT capacity network, is required to be networked across the LAVIMS agencies for the purposes of:

• Lodging documents and plans of survey

• Transacting in land

• Seeking planning and valuation information

• Viewing and, if required, acquiring relevant spatial and textual land information data.

• Searching land records

• Enquiring on the official value of their property and

• Paying accounts relevant to land administration