President Benigno Aquino. AFP
Lawmakers are urging President Benigno Aquino to dip into the P70-billion coco levy fund to protect the 3.5 million coconut farmers from a collapse in copra prices and stave off a brewing social upheaval.
Northern Samar Rep. Emil Ong told the Philippine Daily Inquirer Sunday that copra prices had plunged to alarming levels, between P4 per kilo in the barangays and P7 per kilo in the towns, from P44 three years ago.
“If you need three coconuts to make 1 kilo of copra, this means that at P4 per kilo, one coconut is only worth P1.30 each. Most of them are now deep in debt because they can’t even get through the day. They are getting desperate,” said Ong, whose province was among the biggest copra producers in the country.
“What is worse is that traders have stopped buying. A lot of the farmers’ children have not been able to enroll. Our mayors warned us that if we do not solve this problem, insurgency will rise again,” he added.
The proposal comes in the wake of a statement on Nov. 9 by Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala that the levy fund, should be used to develop the ailing coconut industry, rejecting a clamor by some sectors that the recovered money should be returned to the farmers who paid the levy.
Ong proposed that the President immediately tap the P70-billion coco levy fund, which represented the proceeds from the sale of the sequestered shares in San Miguel Corp.
“The President might agree to add P2 per kilo for every kilo sold by farmers. This will only cost P10 billion for one year. We need the subsidy until prices have bounced back from the current oversupply and weak demand from Europe,” said Ong.
Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone said he favored the use of coco levy fund, pointing out that “it was conceptualized for use exclusively for the benefit of coconut farmers who contributed to the fund.”
“My constituents who are mostly dependent on copra are no longer harvesting because of low prices,” Evardone said.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan, chairman of the Senate committee on agriculture, said the proposed subsidy was worth looking into. He said this could be the most potent way to cushion the impact of falling copra prices.
“The fund must be utilized to address the woes long experienced by the coconut farmers,” Pangilinan said.
Threat of unrest
Sen. Gregorio Honasan II said that news of the collapse in copra prices was a cause for concern considering that most of the coconut farmers were poor.
“The threat of social unrest is real and we should look at this situation seriously,” Honasan said. “I think it’s about time coconut farmers benefited from the coconut levy after years of waiting.”
But Sen. Ralph Recto said that subsidizing copra prices was wrong.
“I propose to use the coco levy to help coconut farmers develop and modernize the coconut industry to include manufacturing coco-based products. We have to build better infrastructure leading to coconut farms, provide educational assistance to their children and proper health care to their families,” Recto said.
Aside from coco levy subsidies, Ong and Evardone suggested that all coconut farmers be considered automatic members of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.
Under the program, poor households are given a monthly handout of up to P1,500 per family provided mothers avail themselves of health services and children are kept in schools.
The coconut farmers and their families comprising a quarter of the nation’s population are regarded as among the poorest Filipinos.