The State does not know for certain how many properties it owns

What it is

The Single Register of State Property (RUIE), run by the National Cadastre Directorate, is meant to list every property owned or held by the State. That inventory underpins the Programme for Rationalising the Use of State Real Estate (Prubie), which decides which plots are dispensable and can be sold or reassigned. The debate is not new: in July 2017 En Perspectiva reported that the Central Administration held around 2,500 properties —1,700 urban and 800 rural— and that OPP deputy director Martín Dibarboure acknowledged the State kept empty buildings while paying rent for private premises, citing the Torre Ejecutiva and its 35,000 square metres, with no one centralising the information.

What is questioned

Búsqueda reported on 3 September 2024 on a July 2024 report by the National Internal Audit, which assessed the National Cadastre Directorate's management of the RUIE between January 2023 and March 2024: control activities do not allow the information on state property to be optimised and the authorities cannot achieve true knowledge of how many properties the State owns or holds. The audit classified three findings as of extreme severity. It found inconsistent figures depending on the filter used —7,738 cadastral units as of March 2024 against 7,772 when filtering by budget sector, a 34-unit gap the Cadastre could not justify— while an earlier 2023 calculation identified some 8,832 records; it also found plots reported to Prubie that did not appear in the RUIE, and that of 114 properties declared dispensable between 2022 and April 2024, 75.43% remained unprocessed.

Why it matters to you

Every premises the State rents while owning an empty building of its own is an avoidable monthly cost paid with taxes. And without a reliable inventory there is no way to know how much is lost, or to decide what to sell, what to reassign and what to devote to housing or public services.

Where it stands