At the end of the year, the Federal Revenue begins implementing the National Territorial Information Management System (Sinter), which aims to integrate all rural and urban property registries in the country, assigning each property a unique and perennial number that is being called “Property CPF”. The announcement was made by Marco Antonio de Melo Breves, IRS tax auditor, during the IV International Seminar on Land Governance and Economic Development: Simplified Regularization, at Unicamp. The event organized by the Land Governance Group (GGT), of the Institute of Economics, takes place from June 04th to 06th.
Marcos Breves explains that Sinter is a strategic project of the Ministry of Finance that has the Federal Revenue Service as its main manager. “Brazil has a multitude of registries dealing with rural properties at the federal level, such as from Incra, the IRS itself, the Union Heritage Secretariat and the Ministry of the Environment. With regard to urban properties, the constitutional prerogative of managing these registries belongs to city halls, with there being thousands of them across the country. Sinter is a tool to promote the integration of all these records.”
The creation of Sinter, still under the Dilma Rousseff government, took place by decree published in May 2016, and the first module to be implemented this year is integration with the title and document registry offices, followed by the registry offices of notes and property registry offices; In parallel, the platform for integration between all registrations is under construction. “As the Revenue is the manager of the identification register of individuals and legal entities, we are calling this identification the 'CPF' of the property”, says the tax auditor, highlighting that there is no interest in collecting revenue in the project.
According to Breves, the horizon for the system to be fully functioning is 2020, with the aim of improving the management of public policies. “The project will provide a view of all public and private properties in the national territory, what we call a parcel map. We must think that all human activities are carried out on the territory and that, with this map, it is possible to ensure that the allocation of a health center or a school follows objective criteria of population needs and not other interests.”
Professor Bastiaan Philip Reydon, coordinator of the Land Governance Group, sees Sinter as an important tool for improving the Brazilian land situation, as long as it meets not only the interests of the Revenue, but of everyone who cares about the issue. “It is another step towards achieving governance. What is happening today in Brazil, in terms of land ownership, is that many children are being born without a birth certificate, without knowing who their parents are, without knowing where they were born, or the day. Sinter will give each one a unique number.”
The seminar
The seminar held in the IE auditorium features experts from Unicamp, FAO, Incra, UFPA and the Association of Notaries and Registrars, as well as judges and representatives from municipal governments. Among the international guests, experts from the Cadastre, Land Registry and Cartography Agency of the Netherlands (Kadaster), the Notarial University of Argentina and the University of Buenos Aires.
Bastiaan Reydon highlights the advance brought by Law 13.465/2017, facilitating the regularization of lands that have been abandoned or occupied for many years – the previous legislation on extrajudicial adverse possession provided that only with the manifestation of the former owner would permission for regularization be possible. “Often, no one could find the owner. With the new legislation, it is enough for the former owner not to speak out for the process to continue, culminating in the transfer of the property title”, he explains.
The event would present the results of research carried out by the Unicamp Land Governance Group, one of them on the initiative of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), pointing out that 68% of urban households in the Metropolitan Region of Campinas (RMC) are in an informal situation , without registration at a notary's office; 44,63% are in a semi-formal condition and only 32,66% have their documentation regularized. “The research was carried out at RMC, but it reflects the reality of the vast majority of Brazilian municipalities”, says Vitor Bukvar Fernandes, who coordinated the work.
A project highlighted by Bastiaan Reydon was implemented in Tangará (MT) and allowed the extrajudicial recognition of adverse possession and the regularization of 50 family properties at the beginning of this year. The georeferencing of properties was carried out using a simplified and more agile methodology developed by the Dutch agency Kadaster, using tablets and satellite navigation equipment, sufficient to prepare the plan and descriptive memorial within Incra's technical precision requirements. . “There, we did it for free, but we can apply the methodology to any property for around three thousand reais”, assures the GGT coordinator.
