The  League of Municipalities of the Philippines members who joined the recent Visayas Island Cluster Conference in Bohol are calling on both houses of Congress to immediately pass into law the proposed Land Administrative Reform Act (LARA) of 2007, Manapla Mayor Manuel Escalante, LMP secretary general, said yesterday.

The LMP mayors in the resolution they passed calling for the LARA passage said it will upgrade, systematize and integrate  the administration, management and operations of the country’s land resources in both private and public lands.

The  bill also aims to improve, rationalize and systematize the land records, titling, documentation and information system into an open, updated and reliable systems, improve the delivery of land related services to the general public and reduce delays in land documentation processing and releases, Escalante said.

He pointed out that a joint study of the Bureau of Local Government Finance and the National Tax Research Center of the Department of Finance reported that from 2000 to 2005, local government units were losing P9.5 billion yearly because of poor collection efficiency of local property taxes, which the LARA if passed could address.

The LMP is also asking both houses of Congress to pass the law proposing the extension of free patent to residential lands.

Their resolution noted that as many as 7.8 million residential land parcels remain untitled, representing 70 percent of the 11.15 million untitled land parcels in the country.

The extension of free patents to residential lands will provide an efficient and effective land titling procedure that can be availed of by most residential landowners since it is inexpensive and affordable, the resolution added.*CPG

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