Agri lands should be accepted as collateral for bank loans — DAR

Aversion by Philippine banks to high-risk borrowers like farmers and fisherfolks is now an understatement and an over-reaction.

And the present dispensation hopes to correct this misconception as it underpins the importance of the agriculture sector to the country’s food security. This is by emphasizing to the banks to open-up more lending facilities to the agriculture sector, Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo certified as urgent the proposed bill which allows farmlands-as-collateral for farmers to access much-needed funding.

With Malacañang and Congress working together to allow the acceptability of agricultural lands, included those covered by CARP, as collateral to secure loans, farmers will soon have access to rural credit. Legitimate rural credit, that is from banks rather than from usurers.

Both chambers of Congress seek the acceptability of farmlands as loan collateral so that the rural and agriculture sector can fund important agricultural activities such as agricultural production, land development, post-harvest facilities, shallow tube well and pump irrigation, distribution and marketing, livelihood, and related farm projects.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Roberto "Obet" Pagdanganan has been playing the same tune as he went on a countryside road show "to assure farmers and fisherfolks that this administration cares."

In a press statement, Pagdanganan said the country folk face pre- and post-harvest financial problems.

Farmers simply cannot meet the financial requirements of planting all the way to marketing, usually ending up striking a deal with the neighborhood usurer.

Farmers blessed to own farmlands through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), continue to be bound to poverty mainly due to lack of access to rural credit.

Pagdanganan, who divides his time between Manila and Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs) nationwide" likes to assure the farmer folk that his days of being blood-sucked by usurers will soon be over.

Known for his advocacy in cooperativism, Obet is among the country’s top crusaders for rural productivity.

He believes that farm productivity would rise to record heights with the enactment of the farmland collateral act, which would boost the rural economy through improved flow of credit in the agriculture sector.

Enhancing the collateral value of agricultural lands would open the flow of credit in the rural economy thereby increasing productivity, economic activity and employment opportunities in the countryside, he said in the statement.

Arroyo meanwhile called on legislators to prioritize legislation on the acceptability of agricultural lands as loan collateral.

In her second state-of-the-national address, the President prodded anew lawmakers to enact a farmland collateral law, along with other equally important measures on anti-terrorism, absentee voting, judicial reform, Special Purpose Vehicle Act and the Transco franchise bill.

The President has been stressing the need to pass the farmland collateral measure as a boost to the momentum of reform in her meetings with the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC). Just recently, after signing Republic Act (RA) 9194, amending the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA), she again appealed to Congress to pass the farmland collateral proposal.

The bill ranks high in the priority bills of the LEDAC common legislative agenda drawn in January last year. The measure is included in a short list of proposed bills targeted for enactment into law before Congress adjourns sine die this coming June.

Heeding the call of the President to prioritize the farmland as collateral measure, the House of Representatives readily approved the proposed bill, in consolidated form, on third and final reading on November 29, 2002, just a day after it was referred for plenary consideration.

House Bill (HB) 5511 known as the Enhanced Collateral Value of Farm Lands Act of 2002.is afusion of HBs 341, 2665 and 3946.

The House having approved the measure, the Senate which has three versions of the proposed bill is expected to follow suit.