Electronic system speeding up lease of state-owned farmland – Germany providing EUR 3 million for improving land management in Serbia

At the presentation in Sremska Mitrovica, mayors and presidents of municipalities in Vojvodina were presented with the project of improving land management on a local level in the Republic of Serbia, which should step up and increase the transparency of leasing state-owned land.

The project is being realized by the German corporation for international cooperation GIZ and will last three years, and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany is providing the budget of EUR 3 million for its realization. One of the most important results of the project will be the Geographical Information System, whose aim will be to simplify leasing state-owned agricultural land, as well as to enable better planning and control of using state-owned land.

Minister of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Branislav Nedimovic pointed out that the new electronic system would speed up and enable the transparency of leasing state-owned agricultural land.

– In the agricultural sector, the state's most important resource is agricultural land. Immediately following the formation of the government, we started transforming this system. One of the new ways of functioning is using the electronic system for communication between local self-government units and the Directorate for Agricultural Land, so that local self-government now have at their disposal all maps and orthophotographs. They have everything they need for leasing agricultural land properly and minimizing the possibility of misuse – Minister Nedimovic said.

He pointed out that the main idea was for the tool to eliminate the possibility of human error and reduce the possibility of corruption.

– The biggest problem was how to define the areas and how much agricultural land there is in the first place. It is assumed that between 580,000 and 600,000 hectares of agricultural land is available in Serbia. The data in the land registry were not in line with the actual state in the field. Now it can be determined at any time whether the land in question is truly agricultural or has acquired another purpose with time, thereby preventing the possibility of misuse – Nedimovic said.

Ministarstvo poljoprivrede, šumarstva i vodoprivrede Republike Srbije

GIZ Beograd

Grad Sremska Mitrovica

Directorate for Agricultural Land

Branislav Nedimovic

GIZ

Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany

Geographical Information System

GIS

electronic system for land lease

state owned agricultural land

state owned farmland