World Bank approves P24 billion for SPLIT program

Manila, Philippines — The World Bank has approved a P24-billion loan to be used in a program supporting parcelization of awarded lands falling under collective land ownership, Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones announced yesterday.

Castriciones said the department’s “Support to Parcelization of Land to Individual Title (SPLIT)” is a program that seeks to give farmer-beneficiaries, covered under collective certificates of land ownership awards (CCLOA), the chance to identify and own their respective shares of farm lots.

The DAR chief said the approved loan package is P3 billion short of the P27 billion the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) had originally proposed.

He said the SPLIT program seeks to subdivide CCLOAs into individual land titles so that every farmer-beneficiary may exercise full ownership and possession and have complete say in cultivating the land the way he or she sees fit.

Castriciones said the issuance of CCLOAs has repercussions on the government as it could not collect taxes and amortization. The same can be said of many beneficiaries who are not engaged in collective farming. “All these issues can be cured once these CCLOAs are split into individual titles,” he added.

The secretary has set as his priority, in line with the implementation of the SPLIT, the procurement for every province of survey and other related equipment to identify and delineate exact boundaries of each farm lot, four-wheel drive vehicles and motorcycles for better mobility of DAR survey teams and the hiring of additional manpower.

Undersecretary Bernie Cruz of the DAR Foreign-Assisted and Special Projects Office said the issuance of CCLOAs had been the common practice before because of time constraints and intense pressure exerted by peasant and peasant-based non-government organizations.

Initially, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), launched in June 1988, had a life span of only 10 years. Its implementation, however, was hampered by the strong resistance from private landowners, resulting in the delay and the huge balance in land acquisition and distribution even as it was twice extended in 1998 and in 2014.

As a consequence, with the issuance of CCLOAs, farmer-beneficiaries have had reservations in cultivating farmlands under group ownership, resulting in the stunted growth of the local economy, save for those engaged in successful joint venture arrangements with multinational firms and private investors.

“We wanted to change the situation by reducing these CCLOAs into individual titles so that each farmer may enjoy a sense of security as he or she can identify exactly which farm lot is his or hers and where it is exactly located,” Cruz explained.

“Only then will he or she be encouraged to work harder and invest more on the farm for greater productivity,” he added.