City Hall eyes new digital land system to seal revenue loss

Nairobi County is betting on the recently launched National Land Information Management System (NLIMS) to seal revenue leakages through land rates.

Acting Nairobi Governor Ann Kananu said the platform that will digitally map all land pieces will complement City Hall’s new geographical information systems (GIS)-based valuation roll.

The GIS is a system designed to capture, store, analyse, manage, and present all types of geographical data.

The two, Ms Kananu said, will allow Nairobi identify all property owners with land rates being one of the top five own source revenue earners for the county.

In the financial year ended June 30, 2020, City Hall collected only Sh1.87 billion from land rates against a Sh3.9 billion target, representing a 47.7 per cent performance.

City Hall plans to collect more than Sh3 billion in land rates once the new valuation roll, currently awaiting roll out at the end of an ongoing public participation, comes into effect.

This will see revenue from rates increase from the current annual average return of slightly over Sh2 billion to about Sh6 billion.

Presently, land owners pay rates based on 25 per cent of the underdeveloped value of the properties in 1982 valuation roll, which has denied Nairobi county government additional levies from asset appreciation.

However, the new valuation roll proposes land rates to be charged at between 0.1 per cent and 0.115 per cent of their present value.

“Nairobi has in the past suffered from a lot of land fraud and illegal land transactions. Taking this processes online will help eliminate this by reducing human interaction,” said Ms Kananu.