Page 5 - Property Rights in the Philippine A Time and Cost Study_July 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Some have pointed to the costs and time of titling as the main reasons why an estimated 8 million
residential parcels remain untitled. Through desk research and interviews with government officials and
patent applicants, this report documents the processes and costs of a residential free patent application.
The titling process has five major processes: 1) Adjudication; 2) Subdivision Survey; 3) Community level
review and approval; 4) Provincial level review and approval and 5) Registration and Title Issuance. The
results of this study indicate that most delays and costs occur in the first three processes: Adjudication,
Subdivision Survey, and Community level review and approval. The study concludes with specific
interventions such as promoting systematic adjudication, improving applicants access to government land-
related data, increasing the efficiency, transparency and accountability in the pre-Adjudication process,
improving the efficiency and decreasing the cost of subdivision surveys, and eliminating handover gaps
between government agencies to reduce the costs and time of titling.

INTRODUCTION

On December 22, 2015, a Skype conference call among Jaime Faustino, Kate Chapman, Erwin
Tiamson, Rene Sanapo, and Peter Rabley (a Venture Partner in the Investments Department of Omidyar
Network) marked the start of the work on the Technology for Property Rights (TPR). TPR is a partnership
between The Asia Foundation (TAF) and the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF), supported by
Omidyar Network (ON), to explore how technology can be used to make it easier for Filipinos to get free
patents for their land. This project is implemented with a government partner, Land Management Bureau
(LMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The grant was applied to a) develop a tablet-based application to help Adjudicators put together
applications for free patents, the Public Land Application (PLA) Mobile; and b) explore the use of drones to
facilitate subdivisions surveys.

Rabley and Shreya Deb, a Principal in the ON Investments Department, visited the Philippines on
October 11-13, 2016. They looked at the progress of reform activities, met with partners and stakeholders.
At the end of their visit, it was agreed to get a wider view of the entire Free Patent issuance processes. This
would allow the partners to see where the most significant reforms can take place.

Thus, this component of the project. Its objective is to document and analyze the processes
involved in the issuance of a Residential Free Patent (RFP). Particularly, to find the sub-processes and
activities that entail the highest amount of cost and involves the longest delays. Reforms focused on these
critical parts of the process could decrease the cost and/or speed up the titling process, therefore increasing
the number of Filipinos with land titles.

The study focuses on the Normal Flow--what happens under normal circumstances. The two forms
of Adjudication (Sporadic and Systematic) are covered. Since most of the residential land titling cases
observed by FEF included a Subdivision Survey, the processes involved in securing an approved
Subdivision Survey are also included. The study ends with the distribution or issuance of titles by the
Registry of Deeds.

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