50-year extension of Landbank life pushed

MANILA, Philippines - Party-list lawmakers are pushing for a 50-year extension of the Land Bank of the Philippines, whose corporate life is expiring on August 2013.

Coop-NATCCO party-list Reps. Cresente Paez and Jose Ping-ay filed House Bill 4621 extending the life of Landbank, which was created in 1963 by virtue of Republic Act No. 3844 or the Agricultural Land Reform Code.

From its original role as financing arm of agrarian reform, Landbank also ventured into commercial banking.

“Landbank is the biggest lender among cooperatives and the most important ally of the cooperative sector,” Paez, vice chairman of the House committee on agrarian reform, said.

Landbank is the country’s leading official government depository bank and belongs to the top five commercial banks in the country. As of December 2010, the bank reported total assets of P565.72 billion and a net income of P8.108 billion. It had 326 branches all over the country as of April 30 this year.

Paez said the Landbank has provided the National Confederation of Cooperatives, a federation of rural and urban-based cooperatives with 1.6 million individual members, with half a billion credit line.

Paez and Ping-ay urged the Landbank to come up with policies favorable to farmers and fisherfolk as many of them do not have access to the bank’s credit services due to stringent policies.

Paez said only eight percent or $2.5 million was disbursed by Landbank out of $30.4 million that it should have provided to agrarian reform beneficiaries under the Agrarian Reform Communities Project of the Asian Development Bank.

“We are optimistic that Landbank would intensify its dedication to serve the farmers, fisherfolks, and other stakeholders and to fulfill its mandate of promoting countryside development,” they said.

A separate bill to ensure that the agrarian reform beneficiaries’s cooperatives are represented the Landbank board was earlier filed by the lawmakers.