Category: coco levy

P83 billion unused for coconut-industry poverty alleviation

By Rigoberto Tiglao

It could be another case, as worse as its lead-footed release of funds for Yolanda-devastated areas, of the Aquino Administration’s criminal inefficiency and sluggishness in undertaking real reform programs. Or there may be a worse explanation.

Since September 2012 – two years ago – the Supreme Court finally ended nearly two decades of litigation and ruled that the P82.8 billion that originated from the so-called coco-levy imposed during the 1970s by the strongman Marcos were absolutely government funds that could be used only for the coconut industry.

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Will the Coco Levy Fund end up like the Malampaya?

By Jose V. Romero

The highest court decided sometime ago that the coco levy funds are public funds, meaning that these are fiduciary funds kept in trust by the government for the development of the coconut industry as prescribed by the Marcos decrees authorizing the collection of such funds by the Philippine Coconut Authority in the seventies. It took the Supreme Court three decades to determine this issue, but never mind the money is there now to be deployed to develop an industry which is the principal source of income in most of the provinces and on which millions of coconut farmers depend on directly or indirectly for livelihood. The amount involved is substantial. The proceeds from the San Miguel stock alone in the name of the Coconut Industry Investment Fund—a coco levy funded enterprise is worth no less than P70 billion. If one were to take into account the other coco levy financed enterprises—the bank, insurance company, a coco chemical plant and oil mills the figure will quickly balloon to double the amount.

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SONA’s deafening silence on coco levy loot atbp.

i was only half-listening to the prez until he started talking coconuts…aha, here we go, i thought, let’s hear your plans for the coco levy loot (160B and counting).  alas, nothing, as in zilch, as though it doesn’t exist.  nothing, too, about the problem of aged unproductive trees that we’re not allowed to cut down without first getting permits and paying fees.  worse, the president’s best answer to the low productivity of coconut lands is nothing new.  intercropping is an old idea.  we’ve tried it and it doesn’t work, unless of course yours is a large-scale operation with lots of capital.  to be sure, i emailed what the prez said to my coco farmer sibs based in tiaong and got this reply today:

The State of the Coconut
By Luis Umali Stuart

I listened to the SONA on the radio, and drew close when coconuts came up, since I still have a stand of them up the hill. From the ground here, my immediate thoughts:

Procy* is from these parts and when it comes to cocos he pretty much knows the score, it’s a job cut out for him.

1. The real problem is that world prices for copra have fallen drastically, largely on a challenge from palm oil. Two years ago we were netting up to P4.50 per nut on lean months, now it is down to P1.50 almost year-round. Even “buko” (murà here) down from P6 to P3.

2. The market for coconuts is now shifted to higher-technology, higher-value, processed coconut products – virgin coconut oil from the meat, activated charcoal from the shells, coirflex and planting media from the husks, coco sugar from the water, packaged buko juice. These are where the reported gains are coming from, but are really only viable largescale, and require considerable capitalization. Large landholdings are the early beneficiaries (Villa Escudero I underatand has a thriving VCO operation.)

3. To participate in the new industries, avail of financing and incentives, small coconut farmers must organize into cooperatives, always easier said than done. Coconut farmers are producers, they are not businessmen and cooperatives are serious business, there is enormous paperwork involved. In the end it is rural businessmen and do-gooders that set up these cooperatives, who naturally end up controlling the whole shebang, turning the producers into the same cut-rate suppliers that serve the copra industry.

(And let’s face it. Pinoys are not a cooperative bunch. We have been so well-divided-and-ruled for so long perhaps that we really only trust the very closest to us. Even our vaunted bayanihan spirit, at least hereabouts, is not instinctive, there is always a promise of food and drink and and cigarettes after, it’s a small party limited to short friendly chores requiring many people.)

4. To help the small scale coconut farmers (under five hectares?), Procy’s sell to the president is “intercropping.” Give them something else to earn from, forget the coconuts, he means, and he’s got all these other products lined up: kape, cacao, saging, chickens… to intercrop with the niyog. None of which is new. The Silang (Cavite) project in the 60s of the rural reconstruction movement (that bred Juan Flavier and Boy Morales) was a showcase of intercropping (coconuts with papayas cum pineapples). But it now seems to be the focus, radically giving up the coconut industry to the more poised financially for the new directions in the market. In this regard the old small farms have been quickly outflanked by new players opening new sites.

5. The message for the small coconut farmers, is to stop relying on the coconuts and get off your butts, start working the land around your old trees, and intercrop. What would be new is if it will turn out to be worth all the work this time. Will the market and right prices be there when the critical days of harvest come, or will it be quickly cartelized by deft middlemen as usual? Will there be post harvest support and dependable technology inputs for more efficient processing and storage?  Otherwise all this crop diversification business doesn’t work. I suggest to Procy, if he wants farmers to really intercrop, he should be fielding futures buyers everywhere now with ready checkbooks for these startup crops, and then everyone will get to work.

6. Material inputs for the intercopping seem to be in place as claimed. Last October (21012) this forwarded text from my sister Babes: “tita, eto po ung contact sa alaminos laguna PCA, incharge of coco seedlings distribution… namimigay po cla normally 100 seedlings per person.” Bobby de Guzman (Candelaria) got some of these free trees himself (in San Pablo) with start up free-range chickens for their farmland in Dolores. I have heard also of ECA giving away coffee and cacao seedlings. Obviously one has to run around for these freebies, but they are out there, if only for the fleet and able.

7. It would be great if government can bring these offerings around farmgate to farmgate. Farming is a hunkered down life, and true farmers venture little outside their cozy soil-based comfort zones. They aren’t ones to run around playing government’s games, they (I) must be reached out to. The government must “missionarize” the farms, or it can never hope to suck the farmers in.

8. But we know, new and greater efforts require new and greater funding, and I dream of crop futures and farmgate services for small farmers with the coconut levy fund in back of my mind, if it should ever get in the hands of honest people, i.e.

The fund is again unmentioned in the SONA, simply because there is not anything good or clear to report. I heard recently that the SC has finally (?) decided vs Danding and given it all (?) to the coco farmers. This is obviously good news, but Noynoy can claim no victory nor promise anything from it. Indeed, what legal tricks are still open to Danding’s formidable lawyers so well-paid from the looted funds? The best thing about it is that we know where this bulk of the fund is and how much it is now worth.

For us coconut folk from whom this fund was extorted in the 70s under duress of martial law, following its trail and the long story of machinations that have kept it in Danding’s hands all this time, we all yearn to put the perpetrators in their place and fully recover this wealth. Still and all, I have grave misgivings where these funds are headed.

From my vantage, the coconut levy fund was a scam from the get go. I don’t have the dates, but the levy was well in force and being collected when I started in Santol in ’77. It was amounting, I think, to 10c per kilo of shelled nut (at P1/kg it was a whopping 10%). The buyers would return with booklets of stubs for us to fill up, equivalent to our contributions, loads of them for they were in small denominations and we soon gave up trying to keep filling them up. Until a while later, news came of scholarships being handed out. I dug them up and filled up hundreds if not a thousand. Aling Nene rushed to sign them up. We were to get “certficates” of a sort in return. But very soon after, that cocofund office in town closed, and we never heard of scholarships again nor ever saw any of our certificates.

In all these years following the progress of the levy fund chase, I have not once seen or heard of a list of its so-called beneficiaries nor ever met anyone with any kind of certificate in hand. Nor have we ever received any communication from any source that would suggest that we are on anybody’s list as true contributors to the fund. My very strong suspicion is that there is no true list, and that whatever list of beneficiaries exists, or should suddenly surface, is spurious.

At least in these parts, many of the farmers and coconut lands that were squeezed to build the fund are long gone, to the great beyond or other parts, the trees the way of the powersaw in the spate of land coversions in the face of CARP. If by some magic, the coconut levy fund should actually metamorphose from its shady beginnings into some real support fund for coconut farmers, I would be very surprised and declare it a holy day for the overwhelming power of good intentions. (2013 Aug 01)

*proceso alcala, secretrary of agriculture

the coco levy loot

so will someone please tell us coco-levy victims how much the Fund is now, kahit approximately lang, given the latest supreme court ruling?  acc to inquirer:

The value of the contested shares was not immediately known, but a former UCPB director said it was a “pittance” compared to the 20 percent of the sequestered shares of stock in San Miguel Corp. (SMC), worth P60 billion, awarded to Cojuangco by the court last year.

Another block of 27 percent of sequestered SMC shares, likewise acquired with the levy money, was awarded by the court in a decision, also finalized last year, to the farmers to be used for their benefit and the development of the coconut industry. It was worth more than P70 billion.

that makes php 130 billion, plus this latest “pittance” from UCPB shares, some “26 B for government,” or so i heard on coco alcuaz’s business news the other night.  that would make 156 B all in all.  but wait, former phil coconut authority chairman jose v. romero says it’s less:

… some P70 billion in financials assets and probably the same amount in fixed assets.

ano ba talaga?  who is keeping count?  will we coconut landowners across the country, who put up the seed money of 96 Billion, collected by marcos and enrile over cllose to ten years of oppression, ever be told, in detail, how much there is in cash and stocks or whatever?  or will it take a freedom of information act, the people’s version?

i’m tending to think, correct me if i’m wrong, that the government does not really want to call too much attention to the coco levy loot — and media, good old mediocre media is being quite obliging, wittingly or un- — because, wow, ang daming pera, di na kailangang mangutang, tamang tama for the aquino admin’s many expenditures like, you know, the pork barrel (for ghost projects), the conditional cash transfer for the pantawid pamilya program (unsustainable), the pambayad daw sa mga coujangco&aquino for hacienda luisita (unjustifiable), and even, pangkampanya daw for the president’s annointed in 2016, sana hindi.

Romero: … the industry is awash with money creating a mad scramble for its use among government entities acting like hungry dogs over a piece of meat. Unless properly managed this could easily produce a moral hazard—defined as the propensity of government to indulge in a spending orgy that will not redound to the interest of the beneficial owners of the fund—the coconut industry.

in truth, my sibs and I are beginning to feel like human rights victims of martial law who have been waiting for justice and compensation like forever.  we weren’t physically detained or tortured, and we’re not impoverished coconut farmers, but like every coconut land-owner, poor and middle-class alike, from 1973 to 1982 we were, like, mentally and emotionally and materially abused, forced to pay the coco levy under false pretenses, the promise of development never materializing then, and it certainly is looking like it’s not going to materialize now.  because, really, nothing has changed.

During the Marcos Regime, a coconut monopoly was set up primarily using coco levy fund collections. From trading to hauling, processing and milling, marketing and export — all these were run by a few privileged business interests identified with Marcos.

Most of the levy was controlled by the PCA, the COCOFED and other organizations controlled by Enrile and Cojuangco. PCA decided that Enrile and Cojuangco could use 10 per cent of the levy for investment purposes. It was this provision that permitted the two to totally integrate the industry vertically23 and complete their monopoly. They created two conglomerates within the coconut industry, the United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB), which concentrated on finance, and the United Coconut Mills (Unicom) which focused on manufacturing and trade. Again the point is that capital was transferred from the coconut production and into non-productive sectors like finance and to a certain degree into manufacturing and trade.

back then, marcos and his top cronies simply took over the money and proceeded to enrich themselves and other big players in the coconut industry, at our expense.  today, the powers-that-be continue to refuse to share the coco levy loot with us coconut landowners who put up the 9.6 Billion seed money.  agriculture sec alcala is pompously adamant:

Instead, the assets should be used to rehabilitate and modernize the industry so the benefits would trickle down to the poorest coconut farmer, he said. 

trickle down.  hello.  bumenta na yan.  discredited na yan.  nothing ever trickles down.  as to why alcala slams the door on any cash distribution to us poor, yes, us poor abused coconut landowners, read this and weep.

Alcala feared the heirs of deceased coconut farmers and the government would end up embroiled in divisive and costly cases in court to determine who among them would be the legal recipients of the share of the levy contributors.

“Most of the levy contributors were already dead. If the government would resort to cash distribution, many of the heirs would file complaints on charges of unequal distributions,” Alcala told reporters in Mulanay, Quezon, on Wednesday on the sideline of the Department of Agrarian Reform land distribution program.

When Alcala was reminded that the Coconut Farmers Federation maintained records of the levy contributors, he shrugged his shoulder and replied: “I don’t know.” 

aha.  so there’s a list pala, except that alcala doesn’t deign dignify it.  his beef is that heirs of the dead might also want to be paid.  but why ever not?  it’s not as if we want all 150B, but we do want fair returns-on-investment. and surely the bright boys of the aquino admin can come up with a scheme that will make not only the big players, but us small coco levy victims, happy, too?

but the worst news yet on government’s plans for the dying coconut industry is this: according to charlie manalo in the tribune, “even if a huge chunk” of the coco levy fund actually came from the contribution of the coconut farmers in quezon (where i’m from) and laguna. both provinces are not included in the dept of budget and management’s priority areas that would supposedly benefit from the coconut levy funds.  butch abad’s dept of budget and management memo of april 25

… listed only 12 provinces under the Integrated Coconut Industry and Poverty Reduction Roadmap as “priority areas for program convergence (tenurial reform, agricultural productivity programs, industry development, infrastructure development, social services, and climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and mitigation measures) in the 2014 budget.”

playing politics, obviously.  so what else is new.  if my mother were alive, she’d be saying, “parang si marcos din lang sila, puro magnanakaw [they’re just like marcos, all thieves]!”  senator joker arroyo puts it more kindly re aquino and the marcoses: “birds of the same feather.”  yes.  a plague on both their greedy houses flocks.

*

coco levy blues

‘Strongest testament to Marcos plunder’ 
For coco farmers only
Keep their dirty hands off… 
Coco levy eyed for P10-billion Hacienda Luisita payment