Agri reforms needed to attract FDI — AmCham

THE Philippines needs to reform its agriculture sector to attract foreign investors and boost economic growth, according to an official with the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (AmCham).

In a phone interview, John D. Forbes, AmCham senior adviser, said: “We (AmCham) have almost nobody in agriculture. The Philippines is generally unattractive for foreign investors for agriculture because it is very restrictive in terms of the amount of land you can farm. How can you be a foreign investor and grow crops? You need to reverse the situation with agrarian reform.”

Mr. Forbes said the country’s farming population is decreasing, and the children of farmers are discouraged from going into farming because they do not see any improvement in the lives of their parents, who face difficulties in acquiring the land they farm.

“Let’s say if you have 50 farmers on a piece of land that is subject to agrarian reform, you have 50 names on the same title. They don’t have a title on their land,” Mr. Forbes said.

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is currently handing out Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) to farmers under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

However, according to a study of the government think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) in 2017, “there was no clear evidence of CARP’s success in terms of increasing investments in agriculture and enhancing access of farmers to formal credit.”

PIDS said DAR has awarded about 4.8 million hectares of land to 2.8 million agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs), at a cost of P286 billion between 1986 and 2016.

PIDS also said that issues such as poor targeting and lack of an efficient land record system delay the program’s completion. However, it concluded that it is unnecessary to revise the law because there is very little land left to be distributed.

Instead, the government must focus on resolving issues such as ownership, cancellation of titles, payment defaults by ARBs and the completion of transfer of the awarded lands to its rightful owners, PIDS said. It also noted that the government must focus on providing farmers access to technology, credit, infrastructure, and markets.

Mr. Forbes concurred, saying that the priority issues to be addressed include the small size of Philippine exports compared to imports, as well as the slow facilitation of crop insurance support by the government, and the shortage of proper irrigation systems and farm-tomarket roads.