Land reform fund depends on farm purchases

The actual allocation of the P150-billion total budget for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program with Extension and Reforms (CARPer) have to depend on the Department of Agrarian Reform’s ability to meet its targets for land acquisition and distribution (LAD), Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said over the weekend.

Abad nonetheless expressed optimism the LAD component of CARPer would move faster following President Benigno Aquino III’s commitment to farmers that all lands covered by agrarian reform would be distributed to qualified farmer-beneficiaries by the time the law expires in June 2014.

“[The allocation of funds] depends on the ability of the DAR and related agencies to attain their targets for land acquisition and distribution,” said Abad in a text message Friday, a day after Mr. Aquino met with farmers at Malacañang and pledged to fully implement CARPer in two years.

Abad, who was the agrarian reform secretary during the administration of the original CARP proponent, President Corazon Aquino, said “the provision and amount of support services to be provided will depend on the pace of the LAD.”

He said that, for instance, the government allocated close to P10 billion this year for LAD, “but so far only about P2.7 billion has been spent.”

Accelerate the process

“The statement of the President and the formation of the [multistakeholder task force] will help accelerate the LAD process,” Abad said.

The government and the farmers agreed during the Malacañang meeting on Thursday to set up the multistakeholders mechanism, convened by the President and composed of representatives from DAR and other CARP-implementing agencies of the government, the Church, NGOs, people’s organizations and other farmer groups.

Under the agreement, the panel shall be immediately established to monitor the implementation of CARPer, especially the coverage and distribution of agricultural lands; the movement and performance of DAR personnel; the delivery of support services to the beneficiaries, and budget allocation and utilization.

“Providing the necessary funds is one thing, determining the feasibility of projects and the absorptive capacity of implementing agencies and the [agrarian reform beneficiaries] is another. So the multisectoral task force will have to meet before the end of June to determine these,” Abad said.

“We are prepared to begin funding support starting this year, like the P1 billion credit facility to be established in the Land Bank of the Philippines, as well as funds for land acquisition, P7 billion of which is available in the LBP,” he added.

Funds provided

Abad said the Aquino administration was committed to providing the funds needed by agrarian reform beneficiaries for land acquisition and distribution, as well as the necessary support services.

“So apart from the land owners’ compensation, that will include support for production (credit, farm inputs, irrigation, farm equipment), post-harvest and processing (drying facility, warehousing, transport) and infrastructure (farm to market roads, ports, marketing stations),” he said.

Christian Monsod, Task Force Mapalad’s counsel, indicated that the farmers were expecting the government to comply with the CARPer mandate to set aside P150 billion for the implementation of land reform for five years.

“Support services [for the farmers] have suffered the most, as in the past,” Monsod said.

Thus, he said, it was significant that Mr. Aquino pledged that part of the Department of Agriculture budget would be channeled to the farmer-beneficiaries “to help their transition from tenant to owner-cultivator.

Budget allocation

Monsod said the Department of Budget and Management had also promised that certain budget savings would be used for this purpose.

“These are all big promises that the farmers will hold the government to account,” Monsod said.

He said the financing portion of the support services as mandated by law was at P18 billion out of the P150-billion CARPer budget for 2009 to 2014.

He said even the P150 billion allocation had a shortfall in the first three years with only about P55 billion having been given to the DAR.

“While the farmers welcomed the promise of an immediate release of P1 billion for their credit and capital assistance needs, this amount is small in the context of their total needs,” Monsod said.