Tillers decry Palace hold on coco levy

Militant farmer groups on Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013, assailed the “extraordinary power” Malacañang had over the multibillion-peso coconut levy fund. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

LUCENA CITY, Philippines—Militant farmer groups on Sunday assailed the “extraordinary power” Malacañang had over the multibillion-peso coconut levy fund.

Willy Marbella, deputy secretary general of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), said the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) headed by Secretary Julia Abad and the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) under Secretary Joel Rocamora went beyond their mandates in creating the Presidential Task Force on the Coco Levy Fund.

Marbella said Rocamora admitted in a dialogue on Friday that the task force was created not by executive or administrative order but through a directive from Abad.

“Despite the lack of a legal mandate in the creation of the task force, the PMS and NAPC, with the blessings of no less than President Aquino, are both exercising extraordinary powers and influence and are hell-bent on plundering the coco levy fund,” Marbella said.

Rocamora, however, maintained the task force was not illegal, being based on an instruction of President Aquino to form a group that would study what to do with the coco levy fund.

He said the task force had no power to dispose of the coco levy money.

The task force, created in 2011, is composed of representatives of the NAPC, PMS, the Philippine Coconut Authority and the Departments of Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, Finance and Budget and Management.

It has been pushing for the allocation of P11.17 billion from the estimated P70-billion coco levy fund to its Poverty Reduction Program for the Coconut Industry.

Rocamora said the coco levy fund was intact at the National Treasury and no one had access to it.

“There must first be an entry of judgment by the Supreme Court before we can even proceed to release the funds,” he said.