The Management of State Lands in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

Pressures for the conversion of state-owned land into private ownership have been sweeping the world in the past three decades. This conversion makes the private ownership of land compatible with the notions of market economies, where land markets should function to allocate land to various landholders, and not the administrative decisions of state agencies. In many countries of the Caribbean and around the world, however, the state remains an owner of significant areas of land. How the state manages that state-owned land is the subject of much discussion and debate, not only concerning the tenure forms for the allocation of state land to private use without transferring ownership but also concerning how effectively the state directly manages the land.¹