Philippines, World Bank sign agrarian reform loan agreement

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and the World Bank have signed a loan agreement of $370 million or approximately P18.3 billion to fast-track the distribution of land to agrarian reform beneficiaries, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

In a statement, the DOF said Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Achim Fock, the World Bank’s acting country director for Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, signed a loan agreement on July 14 for the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

The DOF said the project aims to speed up the completion of the decades-old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) by facilitating the parcelization of about 1.4 million hectares of land and distributing their individual titles to some 750,000 farmer-beneficiaries.

“The SPLIT project will improve the bankability of farmers and enable them to access credit and government assistance,” Dominguez said.

According to Dominguez, the project would also help farmers cope with the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 pandemic.

“It will support our economic recovery program by intensifying assistance to farmers and making agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) more resilient to the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

“We truly appreciate the World Bank’s funding support for this initiative designed to make CARP beneficiaries far more productive members of the farm sector, in step with President Duterte’s goal of boosting agricultural productivity and food security, especially at this time of the pandemic, and achieving financial inclusion for all Filipinos,” he said.

According to the DOF, the government has redistributed about 4.8 million hectares of land to some 2.8 million ARBs under the agrarian reform program.

The remaining 47 percent or about 2.5 million hectares were under Collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CCLOA) that were issued to groups of ARBs in the 1990s as a temporary measure to fast-track the distribution of land to farmer-beneficiaries.

The DOF said about 1.4 million hectares under CCLOAs still remain to be parcelized into individual titles.

“Through the project, ARBs will be provided security of tenure by way of issuance of individual titles. If ARBs or members of their family fall ill, clear and valid documentation of their property will allow them to mortgage their land, sell, or pass it on to their family members through inheritance,” the DOF said.

The SPLIT project has a total project cost of $473.56 million, of which $370 million will be funded by the World Bank. The government will shoulder the remaining $103.56 million, the DOF said.