Carmel Tonna (January 11) has misunderstood the contents of my article carried in Talking Point on January 4.

I never "argued that the value of expropriated property... depends on its predetermined use by the government." The value of property depends on a variety of factors as I pointed out in my article. But the Expropriation Act, until now, established a different set of criteria for assessing the value, and on many occasions this situation was producing vast differences between the value set by the Commissioner of Land's architect for compensation purposes and that set by the owner's architect.

With the amendments, the criteria for establishing the value will be the same for both parties. In valuing property, the intended use according to the Structure Plan and subsidiary policies has to be taken into account. A plot of land within a terrace house zone, say, has a different value than an identical plot within a villa zone. So the intended use does have a bearing on the value of the property. If a plot of expropriated land is designated to form part of a proposed roadway, or for its widening, this factor must be taken into account when assessing the value under normal market conditions.

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