Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 27) — The Philippines has secured fresh funding from the World Bank for a project that will help facilitate the provision of land titles granted through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
“The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved the US$370 million Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling Project (SPLIT),” said the multilateral lender in a statement on Friday. “The project is designed to accelerate the subdivision of collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award and generate individual titles on lands awarded under the CARP.”
A project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), SPLIT involves the subdivision of around 1.38 million hectares of collective land titles to agrarian reform beneficiaries, which the Washington-based lender expects to be around 750,000 in number.
According to the project’s Environmental and Social Assessment (ESA), the proposed budget for SPLIT is $475.3 million, with $370 million to be “sourced on loan proceeds from the Bank and $103 million as counterpart of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GoP).”
“Many farmers who were granted lands under the country’s agrarian reform program have been waiting for individual titles, sometimes for decades,” said Achim Fock, World Bank Acting Country Director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.
The project will provide farmers legal proof and security of individual land rights, which will contribute to the reduction of poverty and rural economic growth and help them weather the various impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fock added.
“Over the past three decades, CARP has distributed 4.8 million hectares – 16 percent of the nation’s land – to almost three million beneficiaries. However, only approximately 53 percent of lands distributed was in the form of individual titles,” noted World Bank. “Especially in the 1990s, the government issued mostly collective land ownership awards to speed up land distribution, with the intention of subdividing and titling them individually at a future time.”
DAR proposed the program last year pursuant to the CARP legislation and in compliance with President Rodrigo Duterte’s order to fast track the issuance of individual CLOAs back in April 2019, according to the project’s ESA.
SPLIT received the nod of the National Economic Development Authority-Interagency Coordination (NEDA-ICC) in September 2019 for possible financing by the World Bank. It shall be subject to the Bank’s Environmental and Social Framework, read the document.
This February, both DAR and World Bank held project identification, preparation and appraisal missions to assess potential risks and impacts that may be linked to the project, among others.
“[T]he SPLIT Project will support the government’s on-going efforts for parcelization and individual titling through the adoption of improved technologies and digital platforms, improvements in regulations, streamlining of procedures in the titling process, and enhanced consultations with beneficiaries,” World Bank said.
