[Index]
Landownership in the Russian Federation:
How good land administration can make a
difference
Geneva, 6 February
2004 - The United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE) is launching
the publication of its Land Administration
Review of the Russian Federation in Moscow
today. The Review describes the history
of landownership in the Russian Federation
and outlines the current legal and institutional
framework for land administration. It details
the progress that the Russian Federation
has made since the early 1990s and also
makes recommendations to remedy some of
the failings.
The Russian Federation experienced sweeping changes in land
tenure at the end of the 20th century with its land privatization, the development
of land markets and a whole new system of agricultural holdings.
Over 50 million people and legal entities have acquired private
ownership rights in land and by the end of the 1990s some 7.6% of the Russian
Federation's territory was privately owned. This percentage represents 129
million hectares of land and is comparable to the area of continental Western
Europe. Most of this land is agricultural and located in the regions with
the most favourable climatic and soil conditions.
The UNECE Review concludes that, in theory at least, all
the elements necessary for an effective land policy are in place. However,
implementation remains a problem, because:
-
Several competing agencies are involved in land administration.
This undermines the effectiveness of the system and leads to conflicts
of interests;
-
Land policy implementation is not comprehensive and
is incoherent;
-
Control of land policy and its implementation is ineffective;
-
The transfer of State land to different administrative
levels of government and the transfer of agricultural land are stipulated
by law, but the relevant institutions are not ready to implement such
measures;
-
Land-use planning in terms of overall concepts, institutional
functions and implementation procedures is not effectively organized;
-
Land administration is more developed from the standpoint
of State control than of legal security for private owners.
The most controversial elements of State land and property
administration in the Russian Federation are the mixture of public-law and
private-law functions within one State authority, and the interaction between
technical systems of real property recording and the State system of registration
of real property rights and transactions.
An obvious conflict of interest arises when decisions on
land and other real property are taken by the agency that also has the authority
to represent the interests of the owner of the (federal) property. This situation
is a legacy of Soviet land law, according to which land was exclusively in
State ownership. The UNECE Review warns that the ability of one owner (i.e.
the State) to influence the content of cadastres and registers reduces the
confidence of other parties in the reliability of the market infrastructure
and the real property market in general.
Finally, the registration of agricultural and other rural
land is also in disarray. Rural properties have not been recorded in cadastral
maps. Land privatization and farm restructuring cannot work until every piece
of land is given a cadastral identifier and its owner is entered in the unified
register of real estate rights and transactions.
For more information about land administration in the Russian
Federation, please contact:
Guennadi Vinogradov
UNECE Environment and Human Settlements Division
Palais des Nations, office 330
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 23 74
Fax: +41 (0) 22 917 01 07
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.unece.org
or:
Christina von Schweinichen
UNECE Environment and Human Settlements Division
Palais des Nations, office 340
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 23 88
Fax: +41 (0) 22 917 01 07
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.unece.org
Ref: ECE/ENV/04/P04