The Punjab government has decided to bring residential and commercial buildings of big cities across the province into the land record system, reported 24NewsHD TV Channel Saturday.

In this regard, Punjab Land Record Authority (PLRA) has developed a comprehensive strategy for digitizing urban land records whereas the World Bank will provide Rs 25 billion for the project.

All the necessary documents for the agreement with the World Bank have been completed.

Under the land record system, the Punjab government will create a land information system in urban areas. World Bank has offered financial and technical assistance to the Punjab government to computerize urban land records. Following this offer, PLRA, in light of its previous experience and technical capability, began work on a project to computerize urban land records.

It is pertinent that the preliminary documents for the project namely “Punjab Urban Land Systems Enhancement” (PULSE) have been prepared by the authority while the implementation plan of the project has also been prepared with the mutual consultation and consensus of the concerned departments. In this plan, every citizen's land will be made part of the land record system.

According to authorities, the government will be able to increase its revenue with this system.

The revenue of PLRA will be gradually increasing every year due to the digitization of land records in rural areas, they explained.

Moreover, the urban land record system will facilitate the master planning of cities. The system will facilitate avoiding disputes over land. Urban Land Record System will also benefit the “Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme”.

The PULSE project for the computerization of Punjab’s urban records was approved by the Federal Government by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) and the World Bank Board has also approved the project.  Initially, the gestation period of the project has been fixed at 5 years.