Bacolod businessmen call for a review of CARP

Bacolod businessmen are rallying behind their counterparts in other provinces in calling for a serious assessment by the government of the comprehensive agrarian reform program, whose implementation period ends in 2008.

The Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry noted that a review of the status of CARP is in order, after 15 years of implementing Republic Act 6657 or the comprehensive agrarian reform law, distributing almost 100,000 hectares of arable land to agrarian reform beneficiaries involving close to P10 billion in government funds.

RA 8532 earlier extended the implementation of CARP for another 10 years, or until 2008. There are currently efforts in Congress calling for another round of extension.

MBCCI president Roberto Montelibano said this call for review is a very basic and necessary element for any undertaking that it involves national interest. The review aims to determine for any program defect and to device means to correct them, to identify areas of satisfactory performance and improvement and to speed up or expand the implementation of the process that is working perfectly.

This review process, he emphasized, is the collective responsibility of all program stakeholders – beneficiaries, the Land Bank of the Philippines, the landowner and the municipal and provincial agrarian reform officers – and each must commit to its success.

He pointed out that the PAROs and MAROs’ role in this review process is critical as they are in direct contact with and have personal knowledge of the land reform beneficiaries. "For having direct and intimate knowledge of the areas involved and the original occupant/workers and now are owner-tillers, the opinion of the PAROs and the MAROs, more than anybody else, counts in forming solutions that can correct the defects of the program," he added.

Montelibano noted that some of the more obvious shortcomings of the program are the lack of managerial capabilities of most beneficiaries, no technical assistance, limited financial assistance, the inadequacy of the land area per beneficiary to make for financially rewarding and economical farming, the 60,000 pending cases in the DAR Adjudication Board involving question of just compensation to landowners, and lands still owned in common by beneficiaries.

The business-men’s group said that because of these shortcomings, the objectives of CARP were not achieved and adverse results followed. Among these are that the beneficiaries are not uplifted socially and economically, real property taxes of these lands have been in arrears for so long, the productivity of the land has greatly diminished, many of these lands are no longer being cultivated by the original beneficiaries, there is very limited loan repayment to Land Bank, and the infrastructure in general has deteriorated.