By Kristine L. Alave
Philippine Daily Inquirer
2:20 am | Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Impoverished coconut farmers cannot wait forever for the Supreme Court
to ease their plight.
Secretary Joel Rocamora of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC)
said on Tuesday the Aquino administration was considering borrowing
against the sequestered assets acquired with funds from a coconut levy
imposed for nine years during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.
Rocamora said the move was necessary as the court was taking ages to
resolve the ownership of 24 percent of shares of stocks in San Miguel
Corp. (SMC), which the government froze after the ouster of Marcos in
1986 pending an investigation into whether the portfolio was part of the
ill-gotten wealth the dictator and his cronies had amassed.
NAPC had drawn up a P10-billion, five-year "road map" to revitalize the
coconut industry, Rocamora said. The first year of the program could be
funded with loans.
"The plan is to borrow off the coco levy," he told the Inquirer. "By
June 30, the Aquino administration would be in power for one third of
its term. We don't have a lot of time. Whatever programs we want to do,
these have to be felt by the people. We don't want to wait forever," he
explained.
Rocamora said Budget Secretary Florencio Abad had floated the idea to
him. The Department of Finance has yet to weigh in on this, he said.
Last January, the Supreme Court affirmed a 2004 Sandiganbayan decision
that the controversial portfolio, designated in judicial proceedings as
SMC-CIIF shares, was acquired under the state-administered Coconut
Industry Investment Fund in an elaborate, clandestine scheme involving
14 holding companies, and, therefore, belonged to the government.
Shares valued at P85B
The high tribunal said this asset should now be used to rehabilitate the
industry, wracked by falling harvests because of aging trees and climate
change, and to ameliorate the conditions of some 3.5 million coconut
farmers and their families comprising a fourth of the nation's
population described as the "poorest of the poor."
A motion for reconsideration has been filed by the Philippine Coconut
Producers Federation and the case remains pending. The federation is
claiming ownership of the bloc in behalf of 1 million unnamed coconut
farmers.
An official paper submitted to a Senate committee inquiry put the value
of this
24-percent bloc of 700 million shares of stocks at P85 billion,
including interests and dividends.
Implementing agencies
A year ago, the Supreme Court, in a decision derided by a dissenting
justice as the "joke of the century," awarded another sequestered SMC
portfolio, consisting of nearly 500 million common shares valued at P58
billion at P117 per share, to Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, current SMC
chairman and uncle of President Benigno Aquino III. Oppositors said
Cojuangco had borrowed from United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB), which
he then headed, to purchase the shares in 1983, violating a fiduciary trust.
The Aquino government plans to establish an interagency group to manage
the assets that will be placed in a trust fund, according to Rocamora.
He said no decision had yet been made on how much money should be
borrowed against levy funds deposited in UCPB, which has been criticized
for granting questionable loans to SMC.
He said poverty intervention programs would be implemented by his
commission and the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Aside from poverty alleviation projects, the money will be used for
fertilizing the soil, replacing old trees, and providing capital for
agricultural enterprises for small they can diversify their income sources.
Neglected sector
About 3.4 million hectares of the country's farmlands are planted with
340 million coconut trees, making the country the world's biggest
exporter of coconut products, according to the Philippine Coconut Authority.
Although the sector is the biggest dollar-earner in agriculture, it is
largely neglected. Rural poverty incidence in coconut-producing
provinces is 60 percent.
The commission has identified 609 poorest municipalities in the country
of which 493 cultivate coconut.
In the first year of the road map, the funds will go to 153
municipalities in Camarines Sur, Leyte, Albay, Quezon, Sorsogon,
Camarines Norte, Lanao del Norte, Northern Samar, Eastern Samar, Davao
Oriental and Sarangani.
Militant groups had urged President Aquino to certify as urgent a bill
that would establish a trust fund for coconut farmers, fearing that the
levy assets would be diverted to finance agrarian reform and the
distribution of Hacienda Luisita, which is owned by his family.
The Cojuangco-Aquino clan is seeking P10 billion as "just compensation"
for the sugar plantation, which the Supreme Court, in a unanimous
decision, in November ordered distributed to its 6,000 farm workers.
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