GMA reorganizes Landbank, Quedancor

President Arroyo signed this week two executive orders (EOs) reorganizing the boards of two government financial institutions.

EO 322, dated July 5, transferred the Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corp. (Quedancor) from the Department of Agriculture (DA) to the Office of the President and reorganized its governing board.

The Quedancor, under Republic Act 7393 as amended by RA 8435, is mandated to accelerate the flow of investments and credit resources into the countryside so as to trigger the vigorous growth and development of rural productivity, employment and enterprise, livelihood and income opportunities.

President Arroyo said she would appoint a representative to the Quedancor governing board as chairman while the DA secretary will remain as ex officio member of the board.

In EO 323, signed on the same day, President Arroyo reorganized the board of the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP).

President Arroyo noted that LBP has included in its institutional priority agenda, the expansion of its loan portfolio for priority sectors, particularly to small farmers and fisherfolk, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and micro-enterprises, agri-business and other agri-related projects.

The President said she would appoint a representative to the LBP board as chairman while the secretary of finance will remain as ex officio member of the LBP board.

Since she succeeded herself into office, The STAR was told yesterday that the numbering of the EOs was continued from the last EO that President Arroyo signed at the end of her first three years in office last June 30.

The last EO signed by President Arroyo in her first term in office was EO 320, dated June 29, 2004, designating the Department of Environment and Natural Resources as the National Authority for Clean Development Mechanism.

The first directive President Arroyo issued in her new term was EO 321, dated July 2, which further amended EO No. 45, Series of 1993, prescribing the adoption of the Philippine Reference System of 1992 as the Standard Reference System of Surveys in the Philippines.

Also in the first week of her office, President Arroyo has issued her first two Proclamations 657 and 658, dated July 5, declaring respectively, the Year 2000-2010 as the "Bone and Joint Decade," and third week of October of every year as "Bone and Joint (Musculo-Sketetal) Awareness Week." – Marichu Villanueva