Who Owns What... In the Era of Firmness and Transparency?
The Cabinet last week discussed ways to develop infrastructure and complete plans for surveying and classifying state-owned lands, in a move aimed at enhancing administrative, economic, and logistical efficiency, in line with the country’s development vision. I may be mistaken, but this is not the first attempt to unravel the mysteries of “state assets.” Previous attempts preceded it, yet despite the importance and sensitivity of the issue, it appears that some parties are unwilling to proceed.
In 2019, the National Assembly issued the “Real Estate Register of State Assets” law, followed by its executive regulations. However, it remained unimplemented, as we have previously noted. It is difficult to find justification for this delay, apart from the reasons we outlined above.
State assets include the following categories:
1. Public ownership lands, such as streets, sidewalks, alleys, parks, beaches, oil extraction areas, ministries, protected zones, public farms and warehouses, industrial zones, schools, hospitals, distillation and power generation plants, and all lands located outside urban planning zones, or any remaining such lands, along with other public properties.
2. Private residential lands that are still under construction or for which citizens have not yet paid the full price.
3. Disputed lands requiring legal settlement.
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Despite Kuwait’s relatively small area (17,818 square kilometers), the government faces challenges in identifying and cataloging its own property holdings, due to long-term neglect of the issue. Conducting an inventory of citizens’ and state lands is an essential process to determine “who owns what,” prevent illegal exploitation, and stop unauthorized appropriation.
Furthermore, the state’s knowledge of its own assets greatly aids in leveraging information for urban and economic planning, and for developing new residential, storage, commercial, and industrial areas. Consequently, the task requires collecting paper and non-paper records, reviewing land allocation decisions since the state’s founding, leases with third parties, and old usage contracts, as well as examining expropriation and compensation records.
Field verification is needed through comprehensive surveys of boundaries and coordinates, documenting the current actual use of each plot, and identifying gaps between paper or digital records on computers and the reality on the ground. This should be followed by digitization and classification, entering all lands—government properties, private assets, and diplomatic missions—into a centralized database, linked to a Geographic Information System (GIS), and classified as public, government, private, shared, or disputed.
Technology can be utilized, including digital maps for each plot via satellites, and monitoring changes and encroachments using drones (UAVs) to survey hard-to-reach areas.
For the record, Singapore, a small, densely populated country of over 6 million people, has a cadastral system for identifying its lands, which it has been using for 90 years. Singapore’s land registry is among the most accurate in the world. Dubai also possesses one of the most precise and comprehensive digital systems globally.
Inventorying public and private assets is a fundamental matter and a sovereign decision. Whoever controls the land map holds immense leverage. Countries that have succeeded in this endeavor always began with genuine political will, before any technological implementation. Those who oppose this project undoubtedly have something they wish to conceal.
Ahmed Al-Sarraf
