TO THE CORRECT ADDRESS

The need for creating a unified mechanism which regulates the exact designation of streets and avenues and defines addresses of institutions, residential buildings and other real properties has long been overdue in Azerbaijan. Indeed, some of the streets and avenues either still have no names or their old names do not match today's realities. This is not to mention the frequent cases where confusion with addresses or discrepancies in the names of streets created a very difficult problem in the preparation of certain business documents or registration of property rights.

On 1 March, the State Property Issues Committee (SPIC) of Azerbaijan launched the Database System of Address Register (DSAR), which initially covered six districts of Baku. By the end of this year, the SPIC plans to increase the number of e-services provided to citizens to 31 services in total.

Database

The immediate implementation of the project on forming the DSAR address register began with President Ilham Aliyev's decree on amending the "Rules of marinating the address register and assigning addresses to real properties" dated 10 February 2012. Involved in the process of forming the electronic DSAR and introducing new mechanisms of address assignment was the South Korean company SK C&C Co.LTD which had won the tender. The cost of creating the address register system is mostly borne by the Government of Azerbaijan which allocated 5m manats for this purpose. However, the project was co-financed by the Norwegian government which provided a grant of 0.55m dollars.

Since April 2013, work has been carried out on mounting newly produced plates bearing the addresses assigned to the streets, avenues, squares, alleys and other components of urban development in Baku. A new design of address plates was created taking into account the architectural style of the cities and with the use of modern technology. The next step was the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers adopted on 29 January 2014, according to which the sphere of competence of the DSAR register included all aspects of assigning codes to components of transport infrastructure, defining the beginning and the end of streets, the centre line and the intersection of such elements.

"The address assignment process is carried out under the new rules and by now, some 1,235 streets and avenues of Baku have been assigned input addresses. In Sumqayit, similar work has been completed on 70 streets, with determination of their exact coordinates (the beginning and the end) and installation of signs bearing their approved names. Such activities have already started in Ganca too," SPIC Chairman Karam Hasanov said. At the first stage, the system will cover the Sabayil, Yasamal, Binaqadi, Xatai, Narimanov, and Nizami districts of Baku. Meanwhile, based on the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan, a number of government agencies have been instructed to centrally integrate into the DSAR, whereas the remaining organisations must do it individually. All districts of Baku are expected to be fully covered by the DSAR mechanism in 2015-2016.

What are the advantages promised by the DSAR? First of all, this project has considerable social importance. The formation of a centralised database will play an important role in ordering the address mechanism as a whole, which will simplify the process of address assignment and real estate management.

In particular, as many as 489 Ganca streets have been included in the address register in the process of its preparation, but the executive branch of this city has already found about 220 nameless streets. Similar issues are to be resolved by the executive bodies in Baku. In addition to information about real properties and the addresses of facilities, the register will contain organised data on the type and activities of the facility, its owner, current and previous addresses, etc. The DSAR is going to simplify the provision of information to private users and facilitate the electronic exchange with other electronic registers available in the country. Moreover, about 34 state agencies - and in a short time, municipalities connected to the e-government portal - will be able to quickly use the database of this system.

Progressive approach

Along with the formation of DSAR system, no less ambitious project is being implemented in Azerbaijan - the creation of a cadastral map of the country. The formation of the cadastral database and digital cadastral maps is carried out within the World Bank project on real estate registration in Azerbaijan. The compilation of the electronic cadastral register and digital maps for Sumqayit was completed in 2012. "The country is currently implementing the project called 'Real Property Inventory and Registration', and work on cadastral mapping of Ganca and Saki is expected to be completed within the next two and a half years. Furthermore, a unified address inventory of the entire territory of Baku is going to be compiled by the end of 2015, as the corresponding work has already been done in the Sabayil, Yasamal, Nasimi, Narimanov, and Xazar districts of the capital," SPIC Chairman Karam Hasanov said.

The database and the cadastral map of the capital will be in compliance with modern requirements, fully consistent with the urban management and contain relevant information. Among other things, the project provides for the creation of a cadastral database covering the area of about two million hectares on the territory of the country. Thus, work has been completed earlier this year on the creation of a simplified model of the electronic inventory for the territories of 53 regional centres and adjacent large villages with a total area of about 100 hectares.

At the same time, the leading trend in the SPIC's activities - the introduction of electronic services - has considerably simplified the procedure of privatisation and registration of immovable property of citizens. To this end, a centralised departmental information system (ASDIS) was created on the SPIC's initiative, which increased the transparency and efficiency of admission, review and responses to the complaints of citizens. Of about 40 services provided by the SPIC, 16 services have already been transformed into electronic format, and by the end of this year their number will reach 31.

In particular, the introduction of innovative technologies allowed the SPIC to register ownership rights to almost 170,000 properties in the past year. As of March this year, the procedures associated with the registration of real properties will be simplified and speeded up further. Thus, given the availability of an application from the person, who is the owner of the property, as well as the presence of other relevant persons designated by the owner, a real property description certificate and an occupancy certificate (the so-called "Form No. 1") can be obtained from notary offices online using electronic information systems. Involved in these processes will be notary offices, as well as SPIC representatives working in the ASAN Service, and in this case, the documents will be available in the shortest time possible. It should be noted that according to President Ilham Aliyev's decree of 11 February 2014, the issue of statements and technical passports certifying the primary and subsequent state registration of ownership rights to apartments and individual houses will be carried out in centres of the ASAN Service.

Reforms carried out in this area already allow the time of registration of ownership rights to real properties to be reduced many times over. By way of comparison, while in 2005-2009 a statement of re-registration of ownership rights to the property could be obtained within 20-30 days and in 2010-2012 within 14-18 days, in 2013, this procedure takes no more than 7 days. It will be possible to obtain other references relating to real estate within one working day. Indeed, progress in this field has allowed Azerbaijan to improve its position in the Doing-Business 2014 rating: the country ranks 13th in the world regarding the expedience of registration of rights to real estate. It can be assumed that the country will further improve its position in this regard by the time of next reporting.