Caption: (Lands Secretary Romilly Kila Pat), Governor Parkop, Valuer General Gabriel Michael, and City Manager Leslie Alu.
By MATTHEW VARI
THE Lands and Physical Planning Department through the Office of the Valuer General, Gabriel Michael, presented the National Capital District valuation rolls for 2014 to the NCD Commission on THursday, close to 20 years since the last valuation rolls was reviewed and produced.
Mr Gabriel thanked all stakeholder involved for their funding assistance in the 3 month exercise, namely NCDC and the Department of National Planning and Monitoring for a combined counter funding of K800,000.
“Valuation Rolls is a statutory requirement by the Office of the Valuer General under the Valuation Act that we are able to produce the valuation roll every five years,” Mr Michael said.
“Why is it done every five years to keep up with the market changes, but unfortunately for NCDC the rolls were not reviewed for the last 20 years until the time when I took office.”
“This roll is purposely done by the Office of the Valuer General not only for NCD but towns and centers throughout Papua New Guinea.”
He said the exercise was done for the local authorities to collect their rents and taxes from leaseholders for them to then provide vital services like sewerage and sanitation infrastructure and other services, also the Department for Lands and Physical collect annual rents from leaseholders.
“With the new rolls there will be an increase in the rates due to the number of years that it has not been updated.”
“We researched that the demand for city land here in Moresby is alarming and increasing and that demand alone will add on to the value of land in the city.”
Secretary for Lands and Physical Planning Romilly Kila Pat applauded the partnership created to achieve the outcome before them of realistic data values for properties in the city.
“Not only do these rolls affect the Valuer General’s role but also affects the very important development issue in terms of physical planning, surveying, are all connected.”
“The valuer general’s office plays a very important role of assessing land values so authorities like NCDC can use the rolls to collect revenues from the rolls to give important services in a growing city.”
“The important lesson to learn is the partnership that those how have contributed through the various stakeholders.”
He said the delivery of rolls would send a message to urban authorities in other parts of the country with plans to roll out similar exercises in Morobe and other centers in the country.
“I am hoping that provincial administrations take this as an important priority for their resource as this is where they can collect their revenue from,” the secretary added.
Speaking on behalf of the Commission, Governor for NCD Powes Parkop thanked the department along with the Valuer General’s Office for the timely delivery of the rolls.
“In any municipal government in anywhere around the world the manuciple government is challenged to provide essential services to the residents to make the city function,” Governor Parkop said.
“From running the markets to providing transport, running schools, health services, maintaining parks, even in our case we also provide other services that do not come under our jurisdiction like bus stop wardens that we are challenged to provide.”
“Right now in our capital city we get the main revenue from GST, but for this tax not a lot of it comes to NCDC- for the airports and seaports 100 percent goes to the national government.
“We have inland GST which is 60 percent with another 40 percent goes to national government, with the 60 percent that comes to us we have to share it with Central Province and the Motu Koita Assembly so the pie gets smaller and smaller.
He said that the bottom-line was that NCDC can’t provide the type of services that residents expect to the highest level and quality without effective revenue.
“Up till now NCD has been charging about 2 to 3 percent of the total value of properties, and there are not a lot of properties that we get rates from as it is a big challenge.”
“We collect nearly K8 million from the land rates every year at 2 to 3 percent of properties, but not all properties are within the valuation zone.”
“Right now we should 25,000 registered legal property in the city, we are only charging about 19,000 properties in the city.”
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