Philippines inks $370-M loan to speed up land distribution to CARP beneficiaries

The Philippines has inked a $370-million loan agreement with the World Bank for efforts to accelerate the redistribution of land covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) to farmer-beneficiaries.

In a statement on Monday, the Department of Finance (DOF) said the agreement was signed by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.

The loan, inked by then-World Bank acting Country Director for the Philippines Achim Fock, aims to finance the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

The SPLIT Project has a total cost of $473.56 million, with the government providing the counterpart financing for the balance of $103.56 million.

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

"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 added.

Under the project, the DOF said the collective certificate of land ownership awards (CCLOAs) will be parcelized into individual titles for some 750,000 ARBs.

"Through the project, ARBs will be provided security of tenure by way of issuance of individual titles," the DOF said.

"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," it added.

According to the DOF, the government has so far redistributed about 4.8 million hectares of land to some 2.8 million ARBs, but only 53% were in the form of individual land titles.

The remaining 47%, covering about 2.5 million hectares, are CCLOA titles that were issued to groups of ARBs in the 1990s as a temporary measure to fast-track the distribution of land to beneficiaries. — Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/BM, GMA News