* My article in BusinessWorld on October 08, 2019.
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“CARP has instead effected a massive de-formalization of
agriculture! Time to allow agriculture to march out of the informal into the
formal sector. It is time, in other words, to stop redistributing poverty!”
— Dr. Raul Fabella, “CARP: Time to Let Go,”
UPSE Discussion Paper 2014-02, February 2014
Unlike agrarian reform in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
that lasted only for several years before forced land redistribution was
halted, the Philippines’ agrarian reform is endless, with no timetable — a
forever program.
Former President Marcos declared his own agrarian reform
in 1972 and when he was ousted, former President Cory Aquino implemented
another version, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP, RA 6657, June
1988). CARP should have ended by 1998 but it was extended under RA 9700 (August
2009). So from 1972 to 2019, there have bee 47 years of agrarian reform and
there is no plan to end it.
Endless agrarian reform is wrong because it creates
endless business uncertainty in two sectors, agribusiness and mass housing
programs.
First, an agribusiness person develops an idle or ugly
piece of land into a productive, revenue-earning fruit orchard. Rural jobs are
created, food production is expanded, and that is also where the Department of
Agrarian Reform (DAR) can come, knock on the person’s door to inform him/her
that the land will soon be forcibly distributed to the workers. And this
contributes to why many rural areas remain planted to traditional low-value
crops.
Second, real estate developers endure many years of
waiting for the DAR to approve land conversion from agricultural to mass
housing projects.
I spoke with Jeffrey Ng, a fellow alumni of the UP School
of Economics (UPSE) and President of our UPSE Alumni Association. He is also
the Chairman of the Subdivision and Housing Developers Association (SHDA). Jeff
said that they have to “get approval from National Irrigation Administration,
Philippine Coconut Authority, Sugar Regulatory Administration, then the
Department of Agriculture itself. Only then can we apply for actual conversion
with DAR. After which comes LGUs, DENR (Department of Environment and Natural
Resources) and HLURB (Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board). All these delays
cost money and interest, which unnecessarily raises the cost of socialized and
mass housing projects.”
President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered that this entire
land conversion process should not take more than 30 days. Jeff said that it
can be done if all these government agencies and departments will put up a
one-stop shop under the new Department of Human Settlements and Urban
Development.
Some 6.5 million Filipino families do not own a house
yet, so the supply of buildable land for affordable mass housing should
increase. And DAR and endless agrarian reform is part of the problem. This is
agrarian and property leftism.
Related to this is the low score and global ranking of
the Philippines in property rights protection like land. Small- and medium-size
landowners are unsure if they can continue ownership and control of their land
in the next 10 or 20 years.
In the International Property Rights Index (IPRI), an
annual study by the Property Rights Alliance (PRA, Washington DC), the
Philippines ranks low. The index is composed of three components: Legal and
Political Environment (LPE), Physical Property Rights (PPR) and Intellectual
Property Rights (IPR). LPE has four sub-components, IPR has three, and PPR also
has three — Protection of physical property, Registering property, and Ease of
access to loans.
In overall IPRI, the Philippines ranked 77th out of 118
economies in the 2010 Report, improved to 70th out of 125 economies in the 2018
report. In PPR, the Philippines has significantly improved over these years,
ranked 80th in the 2010 Report and 63rd in the 2018 Report (See Table).
IPRI 2019 will be launched on Oct. 16 at Fairmont Hotel.
How will the Philippines rank then, both in IPRI overall and PPR?
Report author, Dr. Sary Levy-Carciente, an economist from
the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at
Boston University, Center of Polymer Studies, will come to discuss the report.
PRA Executive Director Lorenzo Montanari will accompany her. The local partners
of this event are the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) and Minimal
Government Thinkers.
The words of Dr. Fabella, a National Scientist, my former
teacher, and our former Dean of UPSE, should be heeded by legislators and the
administration, to finally end the endless forced redistribution of private
lands.
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