Within the context of this far-reaching debate, however, at least four general conclusions can be
drawn. First, there is general agreement that the PTT titling effort, in and of itself, is not
sufficient to increase tenure security, access to credit, on-farm investments, or land market
activity in Honduras’ rural smallholder population (Stanfield 1990: 3; López 1995: 32; Wachter
1997: 185; Barham et al. 2002). There is evidence, however, that under some conditions
improving tenure security through the issuance of PTT titles plays a positive role in credit access
and on-farm investments.
Second, the level of participation in land titling programs continues to be low. In 1989, seven
years after the start of the titling programs, only 18 percent of households with less than 5
hectares possessed an INA title in six departments surveyed (Stanfield et al. 1990: 17). In a 1994
follow-up survey in the departments of Santa Barbara and Comayagua, only 56.4 percent of
respondents reported that they had an INA title for at least one parcel of land. Furthermore, for
the highest income group 63 percent owned at least one INA titled parcel, while the two lower
income sectors reported only 54 and 52 percent respectively (López & Romano 1995: 24).
Third, the resiliency of the dualistic system of Honduran land tenure, in which a relatively small
number of landowners controls a large percentage of national lands, limits the effectiveness and
impact of land titling initiatives. There is evidence that the inequitable distribution of agricultural
land has in fact increased in recent years. A panel data set comparing calculations from 1994 and
2001 shows that the Gini coefficient for land concentration increased from 0.71 to 0.76 for land
owned and from 0.71 to 0.75 for land operated (Barham et al. 2001). This trend has left the vast
majority of rural households with limited access to land. As the preceding discussion has pointed
out, there has been evidence of some changes in credit access, land transfers, on-farm
investment, and tenure security, although not to the degree that some theories predicted. It is
reasonable to argue that these disappointing results may be more a function of the entrenched
character of an existing land tenure system than a valid critique of land titling.
Fourth, the combined impact of a broad and complex series of forces at work in Honduras over
the past four decades makes it difficult to assess the effect of a single factor – titling programs –
on either the land market or the titling process itself. Reference has been made in the preceding
pages to the broad complex of influences affecting Honduran land tenure. These include such
disparate forces as the exit of 130,000 Salvadorans after the Soccer War, the precipitous increase
of foreign aid in the 1980s, and complex legislation aimed at tourism, coffee producers and the
environment. To varying degrees, each of these influenced the land tenure system and the
process of land titling. As a result, changes in such things as land transaction costs, frequency of
land transfers, and credit access by the rural poor are difficult to attribute solely to titling
programs.
