Only 99 of 221 municipalities updated their cadastral

Although the Code of Land Management, Autonomy and Decentralization (COOTAD for its Spanish acronym) determines that municipalities must update every two years its cadastral information; only 99 of the 221 have met this order.

The cadastral registration of urban and rural properties is a tool that not only serves as a reference on properties, but is considered an important source of funding for municipality works. Information is based on the collection of property taxes and urban planning.

Despite the requirement of Article 139 of COOTAD, there is no a mechanism to fully comply with the standard. “It doesn´t exist a body that monitors, furthermore, the agencies like the State Comptroller, which at most can make a comment or an observation, but can´t go beyond that,” says the legislator Octavio Villacreses, who is also an urban architect.

For the Mayor of Salitre, Francisco Leon (who was also head of the Guayas AME), the problem is not easy to solve because there are municipalities that lack of technicians to update the land registry. He adds that in many communities the population is used to live without payment culture and assume certain obligations, therefore they oppose to land registry.