Farmers want COA to audit P162-B CARP funds

MANILA, Philippines – Militant farmers’ organization Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) yesterday sought a “full-blown financial audit” of the P162-billion fund used for the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the past 20 years.

KMP secretary-general Danilo Ramos said the Commission on Audit (COA) should undertake a thorough and comprehensive audit of CARP funds to determine where the money actually went.

Ramos said the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) failed to reveal the identities of the landlords whose lands were acquired and bought by the government, as well as the beneficiaries and the places where distribution of lands took place in the 20 years that CARP was implemented.

Anti-CARP groups, including KMP and the left-leaning fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya), assailed that “everything (has been) kept secret” by the DAR and DENR on the implementation of CARP.

The groups also scored the cases of land-grabbing, land conversion, and confiscation of land titles nationwide under the CARP.

Both groups have opposed the approval of House Bill 4077 or the CARP extension law, which seeks to expand the life of CARP for another five years to distribute at least a million hectares more of agricultural lands to qualified farmer-beneficiaries across the country.

Instead the KMP and Pamalakaya, along with allied groups Amihan-National Federation of Peasant Women and Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), are pushing for the passage of House Bill 3059 or Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB), principally authored by the late Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran.

If passed, HB 3059 intends to distribute all agricultural lands to farmers for free.

Earlier, Agrarian Secretary Nasser Pangandaman said that included in the P162-billion CARP fund is the P72.171-billion that came from the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), which consisted of the recovered Marcos Swiss account and remittances from sequestered properties.

Also, Pangandaman said other fund sources of the CARP are the General Appropriations Act, P55.997 billion; Asset Privatization Trust, P25.936 billion; and incomes and interest from agrarian operations, P7.902 billion.

However, the DAR chief stressed that only P24.511 billion of the P35.043-billion Swiss account recovered in 2004 was included in the P72.171 billion remittances by the PCGG, and that the Bureau of Treasury still holds the P10-billion, which was earmarked for human rights victims.

DAR said that 94 percent or P150.016 billion of the P159.284-billion was used by the CARP implementing agencies such as DAR, DENR, and Department of Agriculture, among others, for the activities under the major components of CARP.

Specifically, DAR enumerated that 38 percent of the fund went to land tenure improvement, 14 percent to program beneficiaries’ development, and one percent to agrarian justice delivery, while about 13 percent was used for foreign-assisted projects.

Based on the report of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), which was submitted to the Senate, a total of P99.776 billion was used for land tenure improvement; P23.229 billion for program beneficiaries’ development; P1.221 billion for agrarian justice delivery; and P18.722 billion for foreign-assisted projects. It also indicated that P6.996 billion went to Fund 101, or operational expenses.

The PARC report also said that only the P159.284-billion was covered by a Special Allotment Release Order (SARO), which means that P11.984 billion remains purportedly with the Department of Budget and Management.

“The bulk of the land tenure improvement utilization was for the payments made by the Land Bank of the Philippines on landowners’ compensation, which was P45.47 billion,” DAR said.

The DAR also said that some 70 percent or P16.193 billion intended for program beneficiaries’ development was allocated for infrastructure projects such as irrigation and farm-to-market roads that were implemented by the National Irrigation Administration and Department of Public Works and Highways.

The DAR said that as of December 2007, the agency and the DENR has distributed a total of 7.142 million hectares of land to 4.3 million farmer-beneficiaries nationwide.

But the KMP and Pamalakaya cast doubts on the authenticity of DAR data, saying that DAR and DENR are known for “double reporting and manipulation of CARP reports.”  – Katherine Adraneda