A Seminar organized by The Enterprise Research Foundation
For the AVINA Institute, April 1997

While examining small business and sustainable development issues it becomes apparent that property rights in general—and land titling in particular—are crucial building blocks for sustainable growth and encouraging the growth of small enterprises. Furthermore, the number of different titling methodologies as well as the frequent failure of titling practitioners to communicate with each other is striking. Hence, ERF organized a seminar to gather information on the various titling programs across the world with concentration on Latin America. One of the primary goals was to learn how far we have progressed in this field and what the next steps should be as well as providing a forum for an exchange of views.

To that end, the seminar addressed the following questions:

1) Are particular methods of titling and registration suitable in a wide variety of initial conditions? If not, are there any rules that emerge regarding choices?
2) What are the generic problems that all titling programs face and are there common solutions?
3) What important institutional issues need to be resolved and are there any guidelines on how this should be done?
5) What rates of return do titling programs produce?
6) Can we overcome opposition from entrenched interests—particularly notaries and the legal community?
7) Have titling programs led to greater access to mortgages as well as generally improved financial systems?
8) Are there any lessons for people trying to reform the secure transactions framework?

In addition to general discussion, we benefited from particular experiences of land titling experts with presentations on:

Peru: Geoffrey Shepherd (World Bank) and Victor Endo (Cofopri);
Central America: Cora Shaw (World Bank);
Brazil: Jay McKenna (World Bank);
Thailand: Wael Zakout (World Bank);
Rates of Return: Alberto Valdes (World Bank);
Final Remarks: John McLaughlin (University of New Brunswick).