Farmers held consultation at Tacloban to reclaim coco levy funds

By SAGUPA-SB
October 29, 2012

TACLOBAN CITY  –  Small coconut farmers representatives led by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), Paghugpong sa Mangunguma sa Panay kag Guimaras (PAMANGGAS) and Samahan han Gudti nga Parag-uma ha Sinirangan Bisayas (SAGUPA-SB) gathered yesterday to discuss their plan on their plight and demand for the “immediate cash distribution of the P56.5 billion coco levy funds to small coconut farmers.”

“The multi-billion coco levy funds came from the tedious process of making copra, from the small coconut farmers’ sweat and blood,” says KMP deputy secretary general Willy Marbella adding “it was forcibly exacted from small coconut farmers during the martial law regime.”

Marbella added that “now, that the coco levy funds are at the hands of the Aquino government, our money is now very vulnerable to become a seed fund of senatorial bets and party-list groups allied with Malacanang.”

Last October 5, San Miguel Corporation “redeemed” the Series “1” Preferred Shares which represents the original 27 percent of the coco levy funds, now diluted to 24 percent, of SMC common shares ordered converted into preferred shares by the Supreme Court in 2009. The order also stipulated that SMC will have the exclusive option to redeem and purchase on the third year (2012) the 27 percent comprising 753.85 million shares at a fixed price of P75 per share instead of at the prevailing market price.

The Presidential Task Force on the Coco Levy Funds headed by the National Anti-Poverty Commission is pushing for the P11.17 billion five-year “Poverty Reduction Roadmap of the Coconut Industry” that includes the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)” and the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), and so-called agro-enterprise development.

Last April, former Akbayan chief and NAPC secretary Joel Rocamora said the NAPC had drawn up a P10-billion, five-year “road map” to revitalize the coconut industry and that the first year of the program could be funded with loans. “The plan is to borrow off the coco levy,” Rocamora said.

“We will never allow Aquino and Rocamora to use our money for the scandalous 4P’s and the anti-peasant CARP itself,” Marbella said adding “small coconut farmers from Eastern Visayas, Panay and other coconut-producing regions are now intensifying the struggle to reclaim the coconut levy funds.”

“We demand the immediate distribution of the coconut levy funds to small coconut farmers,” says Nestor Lebico, Secretary General of SAGUPA-SB adding: “In Eastern Visayas alone, 1.7 million coconut farmer-families dependent over 649,030 hectares of coco lands will benefit from the immediate distribution of the coco levy funds.”

“We are about to heighten our fight for the immediate cash distribution and reclaim the coco levy funds from the President and his coco levy fund mafia,” says Chris Chavez, Secretary General of PAMANGGAS and a coconut farmer from Iloilo who still holds stock certificates of coco levy funded oil mills.

“The coconut levy fund was plundered by the Marcos-Cojuangco political and economic partnership during martial law. It belongs to small coconut farmers. Its recovery and return to genuine small farmers is long overdue,” says Marbella.