He July 15less than a month before the succession of command in the House of Nariño, the ministries of Finance, Justice and Agriculture signed a decree that gives more teeth to the National Land Agency (ANT)entity about which Comptroller’s Office issued serious questions for the billionaire investment in purchasing land and poor degree.
According to the last financial audit reportwhich evaluated the management of the entity’s public resources in 2025, the ANT disbursed almost a billion pesos by 537 properties acquired at Special Assets Company (SAE)but at the end of last year only three were registered officially in the name of the Nation.
With this context, the Decree 0765 of July 15, 2026that adds two chapters to Decree 1071 of 2015 and two paragraphs to Decree 1068 of 2015 to incorporate three aspects: the procedure for the property sanitation acquired by the entity through a promise of sale, the procedure for their registration as public utility assets and the fiscal obligations derived from the deed and registration of the domain transfer acts.
Felipe Harman, director of the ANT, at a land delivery. Photo:Private File
The added paragraphs point out: “The acquisition by direct negotiation or the transfer of land and improvements to the National Land Agencyor whoever acts in their place, for the purposes of article 31 of Law 160 of 1994 (which establishes the principles of social interest and public utility for the acquisition of land), will produce in their favor the cleansing of vices relating to the titling and the tradition of the propertyeven those that appear after the acquisition or transfer, without extinguishing judicial actions or compensation that proceed in accordance with the law”.
And he adds: “The National Land Agency will take immediate possession of the acquired properties and will assume, charged to its budget appropriations, the material, physical-cadastral sanitationas well as subsequent actions to update the area, space, boundaries and property identification that may be necessary, without requiring physical or material delivery.
That is, the decree allows the Agency lift certain loads on the properties acquired through a promise of sale, cleanse vices related to your qualification and tradition and register them as public utility assetseven before the transfer is completed of the domain.
In practice, this means that a property that has precautionary measures or other limitations could be subject to such registration if the ANT decides to acquire it. From that moment on, the property would be marked with a public utility annotationwhich, according to experts consulted by EL TIEMPO, would end discouraging its commercialization.
Added to this is another concern: a decision of this scope, experts maintain, should be preceded by a procedure with greater guarantees and not depend solely on the purchase intention of the National Land Agency about a certain property.
The ANT announced the formalization of private property of 301 hectares Photo:Courtesy National Land Agency
“The decree is framed in the purposes of clean up the grounds who enter the Land Fund for direct purchase for purposes of agrarian reform. That, which in principle sounds appropriate with a view to transferring those assets free of encumbrances to the beneficiaries of the agrarian reform, was designed in a way harmful to private propertysince it creates the possibility of generating a registration in the real estate registry on all the properties with respect to which the ANT considers that there is a public utility or about which there is a promise of sale,” land expert lawyer Lorena Garnica told EL TIEMPO.
And he concluded: “This record informs all citizens that, with respect to that property, the ANT considers that there is a public utility impact for the purposes of agrarian reform. Therefore, although the measure does not benefit the trade, it does makes any real estate transaction impossible on that property, becoming a de facto limitation on property“.
Sara Valentina Quevedo Delgado
Justice Editorial
