Debt condonation frees EV farmers under agrarian reform program

TACLOBAN CITY – Receiving a parcel of land through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program is one thing, but retaining ownership of the land is a daunting task for the beneficiaries as amortization starts piling up upon receiving the lot.

This is the realization of Rodolfo Regis, a 63-year-old agrarian reform beneficiary (ARB) from Palo, Leyte whose unpaid loans and interest acquired due to the awarded lot reached almost P670,000.

“I can no longer afford to pay the loan,” he said, as the payables were adding stress at his old age when he should already be receiving the benefits from the government program.

Regis’ sad tale is not an isolated case but shared by thousands of farmers who were trapped in debt after benefiting from the government’s agrarian reform program.

Regis was one of the 11,917 agrarian reform beneficiaries in Eastern Visayas who were relieved from financial burden following the receipt of their certificate of condonation with release of mortgage (COCROM) recently.

The Department of Agrarian Reform regional office said release of the latest batch of COCROM condoned a total of P799,524,119 unpaid loans of ARBs for the 42,948 hectares of awarded farm lots.

The debt condonation is the core of Republic Act No. 11953, or the New Agrarian Emancipation Act signed on July 7, 2023 that condones all principal loans, unpaid amortizations, interests, and surcharges related to DAR-awarded land.

The law covers 610,000 ARBs under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) where debts have totaled P57.56 billion to get the farmers full ownership of 1.17 million hectares of land.

Regis said the debt condonation gave him a fresh start as the farmland is no longer a liability but a source of provision in his old age.

DAR-8 also distributed 16,023 individual land titles, covering 20,301 hectares of agricultural lands across the region to 13,767 ARBs.

The individual titles were issued under the World Bank-funded Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project.

The program split collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) wherein the ARBs were issued with individual titles to strengthen their property rights over their awarded lots.