Marcos adviser wants review of agrarian law to allow beneficiaries to sell, mortgage lands

Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion, a member of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC), is calling on lawmakers to review the country’s agrarian reform law to allow beneficiaries to sell or mortgage their lands to improve their access to financing.

Interviewed on PTV’s public briefing, Concepcion said that, under the current agrarian reform set up, recipients of certificates of land title (CLOA) “are prohibited from mortgaging the land to the bank and they cannot sell the land."

Agrarian reform’s primary objective is to redistribute agricultural land to poor and landless farmers, which is founded on the right of farmers and farmworkers to own the lands they till and receive just share of their produce.

“So, how will they access working capital? That’s why maraming mga bangko ayaw magpautang sa mga agri-farmers kasi ang level of risk is very high. Pero ang problema noon is that they have an asset but they cannot use it to borrow money,” Concepcion said.

“So, we’ve been proposing to some of the legislators na baka puwedeng they review the agrarian reform as part of the whole modernization of the agricultural sector ‘no kasi karamihan ng mga MSMEs natin especially the micro and small are farmers,” he said.

Concepcion said that he and other “big brothers” in the private sector will recommend to Congress a review of the agrarian reform law and “to allow these CLOAs – the land that’s given to the farmers – that they can mortgage and they can sell it ‘no.”

The presidential adviser said, however, that lands sold by farmers will always be for agriculture.

“So the condition to this recommendation is that they be allowed to mortgage and sell but whoever buys it, can only use it for agriculture,” Concepcion said.—LDF, GMA Integrated News