titling which selected District Boards are mandated to carry out, all other land holdings can currently only be formalised through the city-based Land Registry. This arrangement and the scarce staffing of the central Land Registry caused an enormous backlog of unprocessed land title applications. As a result, certain crucial document verification steps were skipped and the system of filing back land titles/certificates to ensure orderly record keeping has collapsed 44 . This vacuum has been used by criminals to forge titles. Officials at the Ministry of Lands estimate that about 300 forged land titles are in circulation in Kampala 45 . Even the titles registered by the Land Registry under due procedure are often inaccurate since so-called beacons were destroyed in the 1970s and 1980s. Beacons are points of known latitude, longitude and height values used as control references during land surveys. As a consequence of the destruction of these land marks the field data feeding into the national Land Registry has been inaccurate for years thus adding to the mess of the registration system 46 . This lack of proper record keeping and persistent inaccuracies in the registry have also severely contributed to tenure insecurity, especially in urban areas and areas under mailo tenure, thus making evictions easier 47 . e) The impact of the current system on development The described conflict of statutory rights and the lack of accurate land titling not only cause insecurity and evictions, but still worse, are adverse to development. Studies have shown that conflicts and tenure insecurity generally have a significant productivity-reducing impact and discourage land-related investment 48 . As regards mailo tenure, the law itself has additionally logged out large areas of land from the development process. Since owners of occupied land lack authority over their land and cannot evict tenants, they are prevented from developing their land or from renting it out to tenants who might be more productive 49 . Given the encumbrance on the land, selling and buying occupied mailo or freehold land is also little attractive – except for those who want to engage in illegal evictions. Selling is further complicated by the fact that owners lack certificates and have difficulties 44 Ibid. 45 Much of the forgery happens as people obtain a photocopy of the original land title held at the Land Registry. This is possible because by law individuals who lose their land titles can require the Land Registry to issue a registrar's file copy if they pay Shs 10,000, see ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 For this assessment see also Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Drafting the National Land Policy, Working Draft 3(January 2007), 7.1., 132. 48 See note 11 and Deininger/Castagnini, Journal of Economic Behavior& Organization 60(3)(2006), pp. 321­45. 49 Mailo land already by definition is land where the right of development of land is separated from the right of ownership(Section 3(4) Land Act). 14