Holness presses untitled occupiers to register land as LACEP launches at Jamaica House

Prime Minister Dr. the Most Hon. Andrew Holness has called on Jamaicans who hold no formal property titles to bring the land they live on and use onto the official register. He issued the appeal on Tuesday, 12 May, at the launch of the Land Administration Capacity Enhancement Project (LACEP) at Jamaica House.

Dr. Holness said countless citizens have spent years farming, building homes, and raising families on plots they cannot document as their own. “That gap between possession and title is not a bureaucratic inconvenience only; it is a barrier to finance, to security, to inheritance, and to the formal economy,” he told the gathering.

The Prime Minister pointed to recent state-led systematic registration drives, but said uptake through voluntary, case-by-case applications has lagged. “In fact, my estimate is that in the last five years, we would have registered more titles under the systematic registration, maybe three times as many titles… than under the ad-hoc voluntary system,” he said. He directed occupiers without titles to contact the National Land Agency (NLA) and begin registering the properties they use.

Dr. Holness described sound land administration as central to Jamaica’s economic expansion. “We want to ensure that people who want to use the land for productive purposes can get access to use the land for productive purposes. We want to ensure that land, which is a natural asset, can also become a financial asset by acting as collateral for financing. We want to ensure that we can make proper decisions about the land… the environmental features [and] the geospatial features,” he said.

He restated the administration’s pledge to speed up use of national assets, land included. “[However], before we can actually utilise the land fairly, transparently, and strategically, we need to know about the land. We need to have a register of it. We need to have all parcels of land titled,” he added.

Under LACEP, implemented with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the NLA will gain stronger capacity and push registration forward on a larger scale. “Once you start to have titles and you know about every square inch of land, then we can have a proper system of addresses… it becomes easier to sell and transfer land… we will have a better system of estimating the value of land… and your land market, which supports your housing, construction [and] agriculture, becomes more efficient,” Dr. Holness said.

Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development with responsibility for land titling and settlements, Hon. Robert Montague, said in his address that Jamaica holds roughly 900,000 land parcels, with about 500,000, or 55 per cent, already titled. He said the ad-hoc route is often slowed by too few trained technicians and professionals, and that LACEP is meant to ease that constraint.