Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel, Grenville Barnes (1995):
Assessment of the Praedial Property Registration System in Peru

B. Rural Titling Process

The rural cadastral agency, PETT (Proyecto Especial de Titulación de Tierras), is responsible for regularizing rural properties and issuing titles, or facilitating their issuance, in this sector. The Director of PETT sees this process as the culmination of the agrarian reform in Peru. Law 653 of 1991 abolished the 1969 Agrarian Reform Law (No. 17716), but it also provided for the completion of the procedures that were set in motion by the agrarian reform. Since the agrarian reform did not view titling and registration as central nor essential to the process, many of the landholders affected by the reform do not possess clear registered titles.

At present PETT is titling only agrarian reform sector land, but they plan in the future to include other agricultural land. The priority area is the coast and they expect to complete this by June 1995. The titling process is implemented at the departmental level through the subregional offices of the Ministry of Agriculture. Although we were not able to collect detailed information on this process, the following description represents the general process.

Titling is not done systematically, but relies on claimants coming to the PETT offices to request titles. PETT personnel examine landholders' documentation and background information to determine their tenure status and whether or not the parcel is reflected on a cadastral map. A cadastral map is typically a plan approved by the now defunct rural cadastre office (PRONAC) and drawn as an overlay to the 1:25,000 scale cadastral sheets developed by PRONAC during the 1960s and 1970s. The cadastral parcel identifier (código catastral) is also apparently controlled and allocated from the central PETT office, but this was not confirmed. If a cadastral map exists for a parcel, then it must be obtained prior to registration. In either case, the map must be verified before it can be registered in the Registro Predial. This is done by agronomists or engineers who do a visual check in the field. There is some concern about the quality of the cadastral maps describing individual parcels as well as the fact that these maps are not geo-referenced.

PETT is directly involved in the titling process, and titles are required for registration of property rights in most circumstances. If a full or restricted title has been issued to the landholder or if fully adjudicated land has been sold to a third party, then title is a prerequisite for registration. However, where title was not issued, the resolution approving adjudication (Resolución de Adjudicación) may be substituted provided it is accompanied by a certificate from the Departmental Agrarian Unit (Unidad Agraria Departamental). PETT collects the background documents from the landholders and processes this information and issues titles. This process generally includes registering the titles in the property registry (either the Registro de Propiedad Inmueble or the Registro Predial) so that the title recipients receive registered titles. This is a critical step which is often excluded from the titling process in many other Latin American countries.

Titling of this agrarian reform land is occurring in departments all over the country; thus titles issued outside the Region of Lima are registered in the Registro de Propiedad Inmueble and not the Registro Predial. In fact, PETT provides both financial and personnel assistance to the Registro de Propiedad Inmueble in certain areas in order to facilitate the processing of the new titles.

PETT was one of the few agencies which expressed dissatisfaction with the Registro Predial. There is the perception among certain PETT personnel that the Registro Predial is less secure than the Registro de Propiedad Inmueble because it permits the registration of possession rights (rights to property occupied by the possessor that are not legalized with a title document). Ironically, this was seen as a major innovation in the late 1980s when the Registro Predial was being conceived (Forsythe 1990). At that time it was viewed as an essential mechanism for formalizing land rights in the urban informal sector and giving these people access to mortgage credit (hipoteca popular). However, the number of possession rights and popular mortgages registered in the Registro Predial has been minimal in the past five years, which suggests that this issue has become largely irrelevant.