A new land policy for the Turks and Caicos Islands is presently being worked on and it will be the subject of a consultation, says Governor Gordon Wetherell.

Noting that country’s most valuable asset, land, has been a priority during this first quarter, the Governor said it is clear that the TCI economy suffered significant losses from the unsustainable sale of large tracts of land by the former Government. 

“To address this we have begun work on a new Crown Land Policy.  This will be the subject of consultation soon.  We are also restoring order to the Crown Land Unit where systems had virtually collapsed.  This had resulted in the accumulation of uncollected arrears of over $3m for conditional purchase leases.  We have completed an arrears identification exercise and put in place procedures to begin proceedings to recover unpaid arrears - money that the Government could be spending to the benefit of all people in TCI,” he said.

“We are also dealing with the backlog of cases left in the Land Registry and have already processed several hundred applications dating back many years.  We have been cleaning the existing database and computerized a significant number of Land Registry records, to speed up access to information and service delivery and to ensure a more accurate assessment of stamp duty,” the Governor added.

He said that fFor many years, the basis for determining stamp duty was on the sales value of transactions, and did not take account of the market value.  Under the Stamp Duty Ordinance, he explained, the higher of the two values determines the stamp duty to be paid.  We will fully adhere to the Stamp Duty legislation to ensure that the TCI does not lose revenue as a consequence of inaccurate calculations.