The privatization of civil registries

The draft bill for the privatization of the Civil Registry

The Ministry of Justice is preparing a preliminary bill for the privatization of the Civil Registry and passing all functions to be part of the property and commercial registrars .

The intention of this privatization seems clear, although like all intentions to privatize something, someone always benefits more than expected.

This transfer includes a digitized file with all the databases and that the Ministry of Justice in its previous mandates has invested about 130 million euros (24,957,900,000 pesetas). In its effort to collect money, the current government intends to recover some of this money invested by imposing a series of important fees for the issuance of certificates, except for births or deaths or registration fees, which are particularly the most requested.

Registrars will receive a business that is estimated at a final cost to the citizen of close to 1,000 million euros per year , to offset annual maintenance costs of 300 million.

The Registrars sector has drastically reduced its profit due to the decline in mortgage registrations due to the housing bubble, and this transfer will give a strong boost to the sector.

But the citizen would need to know, since he is going to be the main sufferer of this transfer, how much benefit would this operation mean for the state coffers ? How much would the current savings be compared to previous years?

In the event that it is a good operation, why has it not been carried out before, and why have not said resources been allocated to modernize the theoretically “saturated Spanish Courts”?

All these questions will be resolved in future years if this bill is carried out, but as always time will give or take away your reason, Mr. Gallardon.