‘In the first six months since the e-Counter system launch, citizens and commercial entities submitted 130,000 cadastre registration requests. Of those, 53,000 were submitted through the notaries’, it was stated at today’s presentation of the new cadastre registration system.

In just half a year, the electronic requests via the e-Counter accounted for 40% of all processing by the Republic Geodetic Authority. Instead of going to the office counter six times, citizens and commercial entities are now getting everything done at the notaries who verify their documentation and submit it electronically to the cadastre.

Moreover, the average time of case processing has been shortened from 25 to 5 days, which ought to impact Serbia’s ranking on the World Bank’s Doing Business List positively. It was the new Cadastre Registration Procedure Act that had facilitated the introduction of the single-counter electronic system for real-estate registration which the notaries access using the Sale of Real-Estate application.

The e-Counter system presentation was held at the office of public notary Ivana Grabež. The presentation was attended by Serbia’s Prime-Minister Ana Brnabić, Justice Minister Nela Kuburović, Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlović and British Ambassador Denis Keefe.

Prime-Minister Brnabić stated that the Government’s goal was to have an efficient and speedy public administration operating in full transparency at the service of citizens and the economy.

Justice Minister Nela Kuburović noted that since the Ministry of Justice developed the Sale of Real-Estate Register in 2014, further progress had been made to effectively eliminate the possibility of a real-estate being sold multiple times, i.e. a single sales contract being certified more than once. She added that with the public notaries now connected to the cadastre, as well as the bailiffs since November 2018, legal security was increased. She said that real-estate owners’ data were up-to-date and that there were no longer any complaints about enforcement measures being imposed on those who/which were not the owners of a given real-estate.

The application enables the notaries to run a search of certified real-estate sales contracts and determine with certainty whether the real-estate in question had been sold since 1 January 2011, thus safeguarding citizens from double sales.

Public notaries have electronic access to the official records held by the Republic Geodetic Authority (RGA) and other public institutions, namely the Business Register Agency, the Ministry of Interior, the Central Register of Mandatory Social Insurance, the Pension-Investment Fund and the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government. Additionally, all courts have been granted electronic access to the RGA official records.

Citizens’ tax return submissions through the notaries are free of charge. It is the quickest and the simplest way for citizens to meet their tax payment obligations towards the state.

The Ministry of Justice has published a guide for citizens on its website, which contains all the relevant information about the procedure of selling real-estate and the changes to property rights owners.