A collaboration between the Colombian government and Ripple Labs to apply land titles on the blockchain looks to have not progressed after the project got deprioritised by the new administration, as reported by Cointelegraph.
According to Cointelegraph, the project’s initial announcement was done by the outgoing government’s Ministry of Information Technology and Communication two weeks before the newly elected president Gustavo Petro was sworn into office. As per a Forbes report, Juan Manuel Nourega Martinez, interim director, National Lands Agency, said the project is not part of the agency’s strategic priorities for 2022. “This isn’t one of the projects defined in the PETI [Strategic Plan for Information Technologies],” Martinez stated.
On the basis of information by Cointelegraph, the partnership, which consisted of Colombia’s National Land Agency, Ripple, software development firm Peersyst Technology aimed to tokenise real estate on the blockchain to better property search processes, creation of transparent and cheaper property title management, and efficient processing of finance and payments. With a peace agreement in 2016, it marked end of the Colombian conflict to formalise the property titles for small and medium rural properties. According to a 2013 report, only one of two farmers has received formal rights to their land. With lack of formality that prevents farmers from land-based investments, a blockchain-based ledger aimed to solve this by providing landowners with security and reason to invest in property.
Moreover, Cointelegraph noted that the registry was launched on July 1, as tweeted by Peersyst Technology, after having been in development for a year. On July 30, Peersyst tweeted that the first deed had been added to the ledger with the land certificate being incorporated with a QR code to verify the certificate on the blockchain. The QR code could be used by anyone to find the property’s deed location on the XRP blockchain. No further updates have come up regarding the joint project.
(With insights from Cointelegraph)
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