Public, Businesses Profit from Public Registry Reforms
Giorgi Goglidze was skeptical when he heard a public service announcement on television saying that he could call the Information Center of the National Agency of Public Registry (NAPR) from the comfort of his home to obtain information and a lawyer’s advice on registering his new apartment free of charge.
After calling, Goglidze decided to take a trip to the Center to see it for himself. “I could not believe my eyes. I was not used to this quality of service, and felt a bit confused, but it was a pleasant confusion,” he declared upon leaving the Public Registry office in Tbilisi. “They took care of everything and saved me a lot of time and energy. A couple of years ago, it was a nightmare to register your property. Thanks to the new registration system, the lives of people like me have been made much easier.”
Creation of the Information Center is just one of many improvements introduced by NAPR over the last year. The Public Registry office has been entirely refurbished, and the days of having to run up and down five flights of stairs to submit different documents in different places are long gone. People can now submit all their documents at a single window in a large, comfortable public hall.
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| Every day, NAPR receives about 3000 applications for property registration; 30 percent of applicants prefer to use the services of private companies |
With assistance from USAID Business Climate Reform, NAPR created an electronic document management system; trained on-staff IT administrators; and developed a legal framework for coordinating with municipal urban planning authorities. NAPR also streamlined registration procedures, including eliminating mandatory notarization of registration documents. New amendments to Georgia’s Civil Code allow the two parties to a real estate transaction to sign their contract at NAPR’s offices instead of paying expensive notary fees.
NAPR has also created a unified electronic registration and information system and launched it in most areas of Georgia during 2007. More than 150 authorized users (banks, investment firms, NGOs, developers, real estate agents, surveying companies, and notary services) are now cooperating with NAPR to use the software and access its online databases and archives.
“The program significantly reduced the time required to register property,” said Vazha Chopikashvili, head of the Immovable Property Registration Center, a NAPR partner company in Tbilisi. “With five to ten property registration cases a day, that adds up to serious savings for my company and time savings for my clients.”
Nina Javakhishvili, head of the legal department of the insurance company Imedi-L, agrees that the changes have greatly simplified her life. “The process is clearer. The software program saves time and money. Employees easily make the switch to the new system, so I can trust them with more responsibility and work more efficiently,” she said.
Already ranked 16th in the world in the “Registering Property” category of the 2007 World Bank’s Doing Business Survey, Georgia NAPR’s new reforms helped boost the country to 11th in the world on the 2008 survey.
In 2006-2007, NAPR handled more than 407,400 property registrations. Based on that volume, the NAPR reforms are estimated to provide benefits totaling 34 million GEL annually to public and private sector stakeholders.
One benefit of the new reforms is the creation of a market for private service providers to provide complete registration service. “If you want to register your property without a headache, enjoy NAPR’s new services,” said Petre Gotsadze, who runs a small business outside of Tbilisi. Too busy to register his apartment without help, he paid a 36 GEL service fee to the Immovable Property Registration Center, which completed registration of his new apartment in just nine days.
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