Alcala to coco tillers: Don’t expect cash

Coconut farmers should not expect to receive any cash from the proceeds of the controversial coco levy fund that the Supreme Court recently ruled belonged to the government which must use it for the benefit of the farmers by resuscitating the struggling coconut industry.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said he did not favor the distribution of money to individual coconut farmers from the nearly P70-billion fund representing a 24-percent stake in San Miguel Corp. (SMC) that was turned over to the government last month.

Instead, the fund which came from the coconut levy imposed during the martial law years should be used to grow the industry as a whole, such that the benefits would trickle down even to the poorest farmer, Alcala said.

“We develop the industry, not the individual. Because if we make it individual, we won’t ever be able to use the money until Judgement Day’s eve,” Alcala told reporters on Friday.

Not for gov’t program

“I don’t think it’s right to distribute the coco levy fund in the form of cash,” he added. He believes the coco levy fund should also not be used for the government’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.

But Alcala said the final decision rested with President Aquino, who had tapped him to get proposals from the coconut industry and farmer groups on what to do with the fund.

“I don’t know if the President will decide to do (an individual cash distribution), but even the coconut farmers are not wishing for that,” he said.

Based on estimates by the government and other groups, there are some 3.5 million coconut farmers (20 million people including their families).

Alcala said problems would doubtless arise from a cash distribution, especially in the identification of the coco levy fund beneficiaries.

“How can you say who’s a legitimate coconut worker and who’s not legitimate? If you say it’s the farmer who’s been tilling the soil, what about the one who owns the land?” he said.

“Once the coconut industry begins to thrive, it will be felt by the coconut farmers. But we cannot identify Juan, Petra or Pedro as the only beneficiaries. If we do that, it will be Judgement Day’s eve by the time we can use the fund,” Alcala said.

Alcala, who joined the recent presidential visits to New Zealand and Australia, said he had made it a point to discuss the coco levy issue with Mr. Aquino.

“The President is willing to listen to the coconut industry, which is why my assignment is to have the coconut industry make a proposal, which I will report to him. Then the President will decide,” he said.

Alcala said many people seemed to have arrived at the “wrong interpretation that since the money is there, let’s take this much or that much for our projects.”

“That’s not how it works, because if that were the case, the coconut farmers would all the more not benefit from the fund,” he said.

Alcala said he was in favor of proposals to invest the fund in conservative financial instruments and to use only the yearly interest for programs benefiting the coconut industry.

P3-B interest annually

“Every year, say, the interest will be P3 billion, or even if it’s only P2 billion or P2.5 billion, we will use the interest in a way that will more quickly be felt by the coconut farmers,” he said.

“Imagine spending all the P70 billion in one or two years. How will that be sustainable? It’s very reasonable that only the interest will be used in the meantime,” he said.

As to which government agency would manage the coco levy fund, Alcala said some legal interpretations point to the Philippine Coconut Authority, but this will still have to be discussed.

The Supreme Court recently upheld a court decision to award to the government the 24-percent chunk of SMC shares, which was part of the 47-percent block of SMC shares that the government sequestered in 1986 on suspicion that they were acquired illegally using proceeds from the coco levy collected for nine years during the Marcos dictatorship.

In April 2011, another 20-percent block of SMC shares valued at P58 billion was awarded by the high court to Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, a known crony of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and an uncle of President Aquino.