SC: Fair price for Luisita P170,000 per hectare

“Just compensation” for the owners of Hacienda Luisita upon the dismantling of the sugar plantation owned by the family of President Aquino must be based on its 1989 market price, not the current rate, according to Supreme Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez.

Marquez sought to douse speculation that Mr. Aquino’s relatives could get as much as P1 million per hectare as payment by 6,296 farmer beneficiaries for the 4,915-hectare estate, which the high tribunal, in its November 22 decision, had ordered dismantled.

“The Supreme Court has declared that the just compensation for Hacienda Luisita was the Nov. 21, 1989 rate,” Marquez said in a news briefing on Tuesday. “That was the ruling of the court.”

At that time, a hectare of the hacienda was reportedly valued at around P170,000.

Marquez said 10 of the 14 justices who participated in the deliberations agreed with the ponente, Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr., that the valuation of the lands should be computed according to the prevailing rates when Hacienda Luisita implemented the stock distribution scheme on Nov. 21, 1989.

He said three of the justices argued that just compensation for the landowners should be determined by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Land Bank of the Philippines.

Only Associate Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, President Benigno Aquino III’s first appointee to the high court, believed that the compensation must be pegged at the Jan. 2, 2006 rate.

“This should be the guideline of DAR in setting the just compensation (for Hacienda Luisita). The decision of the majority should be respected,” Marquez said.

“Based on this guideline, the DAR will have to check the 1989 rates. Then the DAR can already decide how much is the just compensation.”

A TV network had reported that the expropriation of the sugar plantation owned by the President’s relatives may reach P5 billion, which the DAR vehemently denied.

The President himself has said owners of agricultural lands covered by the agrarian reform program should be “rightly paid.”

“Agrarian reform has a second part. Let us not deplete capital. That means there should be just compensation so that the owners of land do not end up having their land taken from them, that they be rightly paid,” said Mr. Aquino, who has said repeatedly claimed he had given up his share in the estate.

“The capital that is returned to them can be invested in other industries that can help add more jobs in the country,” he argued.

A militant group has said that Mr. Aquino’s family should be paid P1 per hectare of the estate, pointing out that it had already gained a lot from the plantation it acquired in 1958 on loans conditioned on its distribution to farmers at cost within 10 years.

Originally posted at 07:08 pm | Wednesday, November 30, 2011