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B. Proposed mechanisms for setting ground rents
Three years ago, the GOZ obtained technical assistance from the Government of Sweden as
part of an institutional cooperation contract between the Lands Department of the Ministry of Water,
Lands and Natural Resources, and Swedsurvey, the Overseas Agency of the National Land Survey
of Sweden, to study current levels of ground rents and recommend a definitive system (study hereafter
referred to as the Hammar report). The final report was prepared, but no further action was taken.
There is now renewed interest in the study and the Swedish Embassy has been asked to bring the team
leader back in the near future.
The following preliminary analysis and recommendations were presented and discussed at a
conference attended by the executive leaders of Zambian government departments dealing with land
management and planning: the Commissioner of Lands, Acting Assistant Surveyor General, Director
of Agriculture, Director of the Government Valuation Department, and the Deputy Commissioner of
Town and Country Planning.
1. Conceptual basis for charging ground rents
A lease includes specified forms and conditions, one of which is the payment of an annual
ground rent. The basic concept of ground rents is that leaseholders receive substantial benefits from
access to the expensive infrastructure built and maintained by the state and ought to make a reasonable
contribution toward those costs. The current system assesses the amount of ground rent solely on the
basis of the zoning of the area in which the plot of land lies. As the study notes,
The rates are arbitrary and uniform in application. They are not based on any
empirical data. The rents charged for all types of land are extremely low and are
negligible compared with the economic benefits enjoyed by the users (Hammar 1990,
p. 6).
As true as this was in 1990, by 1993, three years of inflation left the rents lower still in real
terms—so low that when a leaseholder does bother to pay arrears, it can generally be done out of
pocket change.
The study deals diplomatically with the myth that land has no market value, and that there is
no market in land:
Only the State can own land in Zambia and, therefore, undeveloped, vacant land is
not a saleable commodity....Despite this, it is clear that the leaseholder does attach
value to the land depending on, in addition to its size, the privilege of using it, its
location, the land capability, and the availability of physical and social infrastructure.
The leaseholder does, for rational reasons, attach value to his land despite the fact that
he cannot sell it. Thus land has a definite value to the lessee and it is this value that
has been adopted as the value concept for this study (Hammar 1990, p. 6).
While vacant, undeveloped land does not generate income and therefore might appear to have
no economic value, the exclusive right to use and improve a particularly well-located piece of land