Senate for condonation of farmers’ P42-b debt

The Senate yesterday backed the proposal of President Arroyo to condone P42 billion worth of unpaid amortizations of agrarian reform beneficiaries to the Land Bank of the Philippines.

This landmark step will ease the farmers’ financial burden and clears the way for the issuance of certificates of land ownership titles to them, Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said.

“That is a very laudable proposal. The President wants the obligations of the agrarian reform beneficiaries condoned,” Zubiri told the Kapihan sa Senado. “The problem with the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program is this —after the recipient-farmers are awarded the lands, some of them renege on paying their land amortizations to the LandBank. They forget that these lands were not given to them for free.”

The high delinquency rates in amortizations has impaired the LandBank’s capability to pay the compensation claim of landowners who sold their lands to the government under the CARP.

Unless the farmers fully comply with their financial obligations to the LandBank, Zubiri said the Department of Agrarian Reform could not issue the land titles to them.

In her State-of-the-Nation Address Monday, the President asked Congress to approve the bill extending the Comprehesive Agrarian Reform Program and the condonation of P42 billion in land reform liabilities, noting that only l8 percent of such liabilities has been paid since l972.

“This [proposal] is very timely because it will unfreeze the rural property market,” she said.

The President said the debt condonation will directly benefit more than a million agrarian reform beneficiaries and 700,000 indigenous peoples.

Recalling that her father, the late President Diosdado Macapagal started the agrarian reform program during his term.

“It was my father who emancipated the [tenant] farmers. Now let us emancipate the [land] titles,” Mrs. Arroyo said.