The existence of human factor is directly linked with the use of lands. The land plans a considerable role in the establishment of financial welfare, while it is the major mean of production in the agriculture. The limited nature of land resources, a well as growth of populationСЃ, necessitate the necessity for careful approach and rational use if lands, which in its turn raises the necessity for the registration and estimation of lands as natural resource and mean of production.
At present there is a very dangerous tendency in the country on the allocation of the land fit for agriculture to construction, industrial and trade facilities, which in the end makes them unfit for use. Such facts are of curse inadmissible when 3.7 million h of all 8.6 million are unfit, or little use for agriculture.
These factors make actual the rapid establishment of updated version of land cadastre of the country. The World Bank (WB) offers to submit to the Board of Directors a project on establishment of land cadastre Рѕn Azerbaijan in the beginning of 2007, while the government voiced its interests in intensifying the process and adopt it by the end of 2006. The Azerbaijani President also adopted a program on the development of unified system on registration of property and cadastre.
The State Service for registration of real estate at the Cabinet of Ministers, the State Committee on land and cartography, the State Committee on Property and the Justice Ministry have been selected as beneficiaries of the WB project. Under the project it is planned to develop information technologies to ensure high level of quality. There is also a necessity for compiling new maps on regions which were not recorded with necessary scale. Respectively, the land cadastre of the country should be regularly updated and carry operative information on change of the structure of the countrys land fund.
Data on state land cadastre must be applied on economic activities, related to planning of the use and preservation of lands, establishment of normative price of lands, payment, conduct work over organisation of the use of land, etc.
Land reforms, which are the major part of agrarian policy, started in Azerbaijan 10 January 1997. It envisaged privatization of lands of former collective farms and soviet farms. To date the privatization of lands in Azerbaijan is complete by 99.8%.
A total of 2,031 collective farms and soviet farms have been canceled in the country and distributed among 3.5 million people or 872,000 families. The reforms were partially carried out in 41 economies.
There are over 2,700 municipalities in the country, including 59 in cities and 49 in Baku.
Initially, the cadastre meant a book (register), containing list of objects liable for taxation. Thus, the land cadastre is a definite action system on registration, description and estimation of land, carried out by the government with respect to obtain information on land for land taxation.
The head of the State Committee on Land and Cartography, Garib Mammadov, said that the total area of forests in the country is 1 million h, or some 12% of the countrys territory. The forests cover 600,000-700,000h, while the rest are being cut and there is threat for deserting of these areas.
The inspection held by specialists of the State Company revealed over 1800 similar facts and fine sanctioned were imposed on 350 of these facts and 50,000 AZN was remitted to the public budget. 100 facts were sent to the law-enforcement bodies.
To strengthen the control in respect to land owners it is necessary to inject changes in the existing legislation. The law has some drawbacks which should be removed. In case with wrong use of land a resolution withdrawal is referred only to lands under the state property, no similar measure is taken in respect to private land owners. According to the State Committee, the territory of Azerbaijan is 8.6 million h, of which 56.9% is under state property, while 23.5% - municipal ownership, and 19.6% - private ownership.
The conduct of land cadastre is provided by the implementation of geodesic, topographic, cartographic work, work over organisation of the use of land, land investigation, agrochemical, ameliorative, geo-botanic and other research work. At present the state company actively works in compiling map of the country. They are prepared in the electron format with the use of pictures taken from the space and global positioning stations (GPS). Moreover, there was established a base at the Japanese grant ($2.2m), which is specialized in data processing.
Two years ago within the framework of a project on establishment of advanced land cadastre Improvement of production opportunities of the Scientific-Production Center of the state land cadastre and monitoring, a special airliner Beechcraft Super King Air - 350, belonging to the Swiss Federal Topographic Service, took an air photo of Absheron peninsular. The flights were held over Absheron peninsular, which is conditionally divided into three zones in accordance with the density of population. The exact borders of plots are the necessary terms for efficient use of lands. With the help of new cadastre maps the land owners can exactly define the area of plots obtained through privatization and resolve the disputes arisen in the border of private property.
Along with the WB, the German bank for development KfW also offered its assistance to the country in the project on assistance to the development of these fields. However, the bank insists on establishment of a unified organization in this sphere as a term for the commencement of the project. At the same time the bank welcomes the strengthening and transfer of functions of the State Register of Real Estate, while for the time being it is not ready to estimate the sufficiency of these resolutions for the implementation of the projects, as the functions of the state Service and the State Committee on Land and Cartography are still to be distributed clearly.
The banks position will mostly depend on the resolution of the World Bank, which is designing a similar project with the budget of $58m. The Baku office of KfW and WB are currently involved in reviewing the legislative regulation of this field, and the report will be based on our resolutions. KfW is ready to allot 3.5m euros. The sum will be enough for the State Register of Real Estate to form a nuclear of the unified automated registration system of property and cadastre.