The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (December, 2003) of the Government of Pakistan (GOP) highlights the importance of the rural economy for poverty reduction and sustained economic growth. Given that land is at the heart of agriculture and the rural economy in Pakistan, particularly in Punjab Province, land ownership and administration issues are of key importance. Inequalities of land distribution, tenure insecurity and difficulties associated with the land administration and registration system are closely interrelated and continue to impose significant constraints on both rural and urban populations, particularly the poor.
Land transactions are relatively high cost (containing a high proportion of informal costs), and disputes about authenticity of land rights are caused, among others, by the inefficient and dispersed land records system. As a result land markets are thin and land prices are in excess of the discounted value of potential agricultural earnings from land. The low mobility of land contributes to perpetuating the highly unequal distribution of land and, thus, livelihood opportunities read more...

The higher level objective of the Project is to improve the land records service delivery in the Province of Punjab, contributing to long-lasting tenure security. The outcomes, expected to result from the Project, are:

1. Increased access to land records at lower transaction cost for the beneficiary, through a client-responsive service.
2. Increased level of tenure security of land-right holders.   read more..

Making land rights secure, reducing the potential for disputes and enabling an improved investment climate are urgent tasks for the BOR and have been prioritized at the highest levels of the Go Punjab for the entire Province. Over the long-term the Government intends to move to an effective system of land records management which will link text and spatial data effectively and will make rights in land more secure.
This will entail significant institutional, legal and policy changes, as well as investment in human resource development, information systems, and improvement in the available data bases on land.. As a key first phase in this long-term program, the Government is focusing on modernization of the land records system. While the proposed program aims at having a rural-urban focus due to the nature of the issues to be addressed, the development of an urban component would be gradual due to the current complex and dispersed institutional setting. read more...

The approach followed in the design of the proposed five-year Project encompasses four main actions:

Setting the foundations with the objective of generating and strengthening the capacity of the responsible entities to effectively manage and administer the modernized land records system Developing and deploying an automated land records system (LRMIS) and performing all other pre-service delivery tasks Provision of services to the population – with the objective of managing,    read more..