De Soto principle can be applied in RP – Arroyo

It’s applicable here.

Adherence to the so-called "De Soto" principle is the cornerstone of the Arroyo administration’s program to try to eradicate poverty in the country.

President Arroyo said yesterday she has read the dissertations of Peruvian socio-economist Hernando de Soto, especially his concept of how to tap the underground economy’s vast potential.

"The De Soto principles are really being followed," she said. "The essence is you empower the people to own the land that they are occupying that belongs to the government. So that they can use these (lands) as collateral and they will have access to capital. We are already doing that."

Mrs. Arroyo specifically mentioned De Soto’s findings and recommendations, which can be read in his book "Dead Capital of the Poor in the Philippines."

However, Mrs. Arroyo said she need not refer to the study which the Estrada administration had commissioned De Soto to do as she had already read and studied it when she was vice president.

Mrs. Arroyo said her administration has already set in motion a plan to provide houses to 150,000 urban poor families through a series of presidential proclamations.

A total of P20 billion has been allocated to carry out her administration’s objective of providing houses to 100,000 families nationwide by 2004, she said.

Mrs. Arroyo pleaded with Filipinos yesterday to give her more time to revive the economy, which has slowed down since the Asian crisis four years ago.

"There are forces be our control that are shaping and influencing the whole world economy," she said. "These external factors are playing havoc on the economies of many nations. Each country must find a way to address these intrusive difficulties."

De Soto turned over the study’s results to the government in April last year and which then President Joseph Estrada vowed to use as basis of his administration’s Erap Para sa Mahirap program for the poor.

De Soto, president of the Lima-based Instituto Libertad Democracia, recommended these anti-poverty strategies in a December 1998 study, which also looked into the country’s thriving

"underground economy."

At The STAR’s 15th anniversary celebration Thursday night at The Tent in Fort Bonifacio, Makati City, Peruvian Ambassador Julio Cardenas said De Soto remains a very popular figure in his country.

Cardenas said De Soto would have run and won in last month’s presidential elections in Peru had he been able to file his certificate of candidacy on time.

Mrs. Arroyo also spoke at The STAR anniversary.

Meanwhile, opposition Senators Rodolfo Biazon and Gregorio Honasan supported yesterday Mrs. Arroyo’s program on mass housing and land distribution.

Biazon said one of his priority bills was the creation of a Department of Housing and Urban Development to synchronize the efforts of the different housing agencies to solve the country’s 4.5 million housing backlog.

"Ironically, the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) reports that there is an estimated 100,000 government-owned housing units nationwide which are idle and unoccupied," he said. "These housing units are assets acquired with the people’s money and represent wastage of government resources."

Biazon said his bill seeks to elevate the HUDCC to a department and aims to expand its responsibilities by giving it direct control and supervision over all housing agencies and corporations.

"My proposition to fast-track the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development is corollary to my personal stand of critical collaboration," he said.

On the other hand, Honasan said his bills aim to plug loopholes in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) law and make more effective the adjudication of agrarian-related disputes in the various regional trial courts.

"While I find it very noble to distribute 100,000 hectares of public lands and another 100,000 hectares of private lands every year, it is doomed to fail unless legal infirmities in the CARP law are cured by Congress," he said.

Honasan said once passed into law, his other bill will provide a prescriptive period for the filing of petitions to cancel Emancipation Patents or Certificates of Land Ownership Awards granted to landless farmers.

"The implementation of CARP has earned the reputation of being the longest-running reform program in the world," he said. "Although it has structural defects as encountered by government officials and beneficiaries, its major problem is the funding and the will to enforce the program."

Emancipation Patents and Certificate of Land Ownership Awards can easily be canceled anytime once the court rules that the lands are not covered by CARP on the insistence of the land owner, he added.–Marichu Villanueva, Aurea Calica, AFP