Need to reform land markets to improve fund mobilisation of urban local bodies: Bibek Debroy

There is a need to reform land markets to improve fund mobilisation of urban local bodies, Bibek Debroy chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister said on Wednesday.

''Reform of land market does not mean only property taxes but of course we need to know who owns what piece of land and in many parts land records are in sham,'' he said while giving keynote address in a workshop organised by G20 Infrastructure Working Group here.

In a country like India, he said, greenfield urbanisation is rare as most urbanisation is brownfield.

He advised empowering greater transparency into land conversion.

''For most purposes, there is a lack of transparency about land conversion, because there are vested interests who don't like conversion to be transparent,'' he said.

Talking about generation of funds by local authorities, he said there are other means also like user charges apart from property taxes.

He also said that there should be proper devolution of funds, not from unions to states but also within states down to urban local bodies.