The Ministry in charge of Housing indicated on Thursday that the preliminary draft text on real estate development aims to clean up the practice, to counter land grabbing and to preserve cultivable land for future generations.
“By adopting this draft law, the Transition government is clearly showing its desire to clean up the practice of real estate development activity and to put an end to the serious abuses observed so far,” said the minister on Thursday. of Town Planning, Land Affairs and Housing, Mikaïlou Sidibé.
He added that the text will help counter land grabbing and promote better management of national land.
Mikaïlou Sidibé assured that the government’s approach is to preserve arable land for current and future generations.
The minister who spoke Thursday in Ouagadougou, on the occasion of the resumption of government press briefings, said that the draft law on real estate development includes three major innovations to regulate the sector.
Mr. Sidibé noted that the first innovation is the definition of the property development activity excluding private property developers from urban planning operations, in particular subdivision and restructuring.
According to him, the second relates to real estate projects that can only be carried out in municipalities with urban planning documents.
For Mikaïlou Sidibé, natural persons are prohibited from carrying out this activity, emphasizing that it is exclusively reserved for legal persons governed by public or private law, which must only be carried out on developed urban land.
According to him, the third innovation remains the limitation of areas for the purposes of real estate development.
The first head of the department in charge of Habitat said that a national validation workshop had set the limitation to 25 hectares of land area and yesterday’s Council of Ministers reduced it to 5 hectares in the draft bill.
The Minister indicated the other major innovation which is the obligation for real estate developers to request the prior authorization of the Ministry in charge of Town Planning and Construction for any advertising on any real estate product whatsoever.
Still in the same vein, exclusivity is recognized for the State in the mobilization of land for real estate development, the review of the provisions relating to the housing cooperative.
Mr. Sidibé assured that the legal nature of the cooperative has been clearly affirmed and replaced by a mutual organization subject to the provisions of the regulations of social mutuality within WAEMU.
He added that the law provides for penalties in the real estate development activity in the event of an infringement.
For him, his department has engaged with all the actors, to come up with an important plan for the process of reviewing the law in Burkina Faso.
Source: Burkina Information Agency