Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has signed into law Friday (July 7) the New Agrarian Emancipation Act, which would write off almost PHP 57.65 billion ($1.04 billion) in land-related debt owed by more than half a million farmers as a move to bolster food production.
The law would specifically waive all property-related debt owed by farmers who had been given land on 30-year payment terms under a 1988 land reform program but have been unable to pay, local media reported.
"We know these farmers do not have the means to pay this huge debt. So putting it under the government's tab is the right thing to do," the president said at a signing ceremony at Manila's Malacañang Palace.
Writing off the loans issued by government banks meant "doing everything" to increase the country's food production, he added.
Under a law passed about a year after Marcos's father and namesake were toppled in a bloodless "People Power" revolt in 1986, about 4.8 million hectares of plots were distributed to almost three million landless farmers, equivalent to 16% of the country's land area.
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Hopes and Fears from Filipino Farmers
Philippine Congress passed the new legislation because nearly 1.2 million hectares of redistributed farmland had gone unpaid, with the farm sector's contribution to the national economy dwindling.
Because of unpaid loans, farmers were forced to sell their lands, and the government's move to forgive them was a way to prevent any large-scale selling as well as a huge step in achieving the Marcos administration's goal of food security for the country, Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III added.
Marcos, who also oversees his cabinet's agriculture portfolio, stated the hefty cost was justified to unburden more than 610,000 land reform beneficiaries. The Philippine government would also spend another PHP 206.3 million ($3.7 million) to compensate landowners whose properties were transferred to tenants. "We need to revitalize the agriculture sector," he added.
The legislation was triggered by food shortages and soaring prices of farm commodities, including onions and sugar, while imports of rice, the national food staple, also surged.
While some groups lauded the signing of the new law, they are also concerned that the government still needed to come up with a new agrarian reform program.
"We sincerely hope that farmer-beneficiaries will fully benefit from RA 11953 or the New Agrarian Emancipation Act, and will not turn out like the Ferdinand Marcos Sr.-era Presidential Decree 27 that further burdened and deprived rice farmers of lands to till," Farmers' Movement of the Philippines (KMP) chair Danilo Ramos told CNN Philippines.
