Efforts to subdivide collective certificates of land ownership award (CCLOA) is gaining ground as the Department of Agrarian Reform has already parcellated more than half of all common titles.
During DAR’s 2019 Summative Assessment and 2020 Planning Conference held recently in Baguio City, 1,250,680 CCLOAS of the 2,370,330 has already been split as of last year.
While there are still 1,119,650 CCLOAs remaining, the agency only has 816,784 titles to work on, DAR Usec. for Field Operations David Erro said in his report.
Erro said the other 302,866 are indivisible as 162,582 of them are classified as timberlands, forests, roads and/or watershed.
Another 140,284 indivisible titles are awarded to farmer-beneficiaries, who have preferred to keep them unchanged. These are farmers’ associations and cooperatives, which are successfully engaged in joint venture arrangements with multi-national corporations and private investors.
“We are confident to parcelize CCLOAs into individual titles before the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte ends in 2022,” Erro said.
Duterte issued a standing order to the DAR to subdivide CCLOAs before his term expires.
Of the 816,784 divisible titles, Erro said the department is targeting 544,562 CCLOAs, the bulk of which or 350,993 titles are landed estates that are non-compensable lands, such as settlement areas and government-owned lands.
He said the other 193,569 titles are compensable lands, which are classified as compulsory acquisition and voluntary offer to sell, while others fall under Presidential Decree 27 or the “Operation Land Transfer.”
Here, the CCLOAs are awarded not to particular farmers’ associations and/or cooperatives but to groups of farmer-beneficiaries, whose names are listed on the titles, Erro said.
He added that CCLOAs awarded under the name of farmers’ associations and cooperatives, which account for 83,856 titles are temporarily put aside to give them ample time to decide between collective or individual titles.
Also set aside for the time being are CCLOAs that are awarded under “voluntary land transfer,” a scheme where farmer-beneficiaries have agreed to pay the landowners for the land awarded to them collectively. – DAR release
April 26, 2024
