The Ghana Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL) is taking the lead in revamping the processes for obtaining title certificates, securing consent letters, and registering land-titles and mortgages.
The initiative follows complaints from banks about the difficulties they face when verifying title certificates, acquiring consent letters and completing land-title and mortgage registrations for their clients.
Consequently, these challenges frequently result in delays to disbursing funds for agribusiness clients – whose operations are often time-sensitive and subject to seasonal constraints.
Acknowledging the gravity of these challenges, GIRSAL said it is actively initiating collaboration with the Lands Commission in a bid to simplify these processes and procedures.
In this regard, the organisation arranged a breakfast meeting in Accra with Chairman-Lands Commission, Alex Quaynor, to discuss the barriers impeding smooth processing of documents at the Lands Commission and consider potential remedies.
Commenting on the meeting’s outcome, Chief Executive Officer-GIRSAL, Kwesi Korboe, said the event clarified mortgage registration processes and offered potential solutions for banks to navigate obstacles they are currently encountering. Additionally, it provided insight into the Lands Commission’s long-term strategies for addressing these challenges.
“So, we deemed it important to organise this meeting with the Lands Commission, allowing the Commission’s national chairman to explain the mortgage registration process to bankers and address some of the challenges and issues banks are facing, in order to help streamline land registration,” he stated.
He added that even though banks give loans or facilities to clients because of their project’s viability, “The issue of securing, perfecting or assigning titles to the banks is critical because it gives them a safeguard; a cushion in the event that something goes wrong with the loans”.
During the forum, National Chairman-Lands Commission, Alex Quaynor, mentioned the Commission is in the process of establishing a corporate portal aimed at streamlining verification of title certificates, acquisition of consent letters and the completion of land-title and mortgage registrations.
This, he said, is to provide banks with some premium services to ensure efficiency and get rid of continuous delays hindering the banks’ ability to give credit to their clients.
“The main challenge is the issue of delay in processing mortgages and getting consent to mortgages, and this portal will largely help to resolve the issue,” he stated.
The portal is currently being piloted in partnership with FNB Bank.
Meanwhile, it was agreed during the meeting that a list of outstanding applications for registration of mortgages or consent for mortgages must be compiled for expedited processing.
