Coconut bills get full support from partylist

TACLOBAN CITY, Nov. 2  – Bills proposing to revitalize the coconut industry and use the coconut levy fund got the full support of the An Waray Partylist.

Partylist Representative Victoria Isabel Noel said Thursday these bills are essential legislations that would help the country’s marginalized coconut farmers.

"Our tree of life, properly nurtured and never neglected, can ensure a sustained quality of life for employed farmers, lessees and tillers who can, in the process, be direct participants in and beneficiaries of the industry,” Noel said.

The bill on revitalizing the coconut industry aims to promote the rapid, steady and continuous integrated development and growth of the coconut industry in all its aspects and ensure that the coconut farmers, farm workers, processor, lessees and tillers and their families, shall become direct participants in, and beneficiaries of, such development and growth, thus increasing their income and uplifting their quality of life.

“Among its primary goals is to hasten and advance industrialization in the coconut industry and the diversification and proper utilization of coconut products and by-products,” Noel added.

The bill, if it passes into law, will benefit the Eastern Visayas region, with coconut as one of its major products.

Revitalizing the industry would likewise boost the recovery of the region from Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013, which damaged a major part of the industry and displaced thousands of coconut farmers. 

Noel also expressed her full support for House of Representatives Bill 5745, which provides for the use of the coconut levy funds. The bill will establish a Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Trust Fund, which is seen to benefit the “poor and marginalized” coconut farmers.

It also provides that PHP10 billion of the initial trust principal to be used within two years from the approval of the “Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Plan” by the President of the Philippines.

The measure provides that the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Trust Fund Committee shall be created, under the Office of the President, which shall monitor the implementation of the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Plan and approve disbursements out of the trust fund.

The trust fund shall consist of the principal and income. No portion of the trust fund shall accrue to the general fund of the national government. It shall be capitalized, managed, utilized and accounted for in the manner provided in the Act.

Noel said the coconut industry’s viability and sustained improvement in the areas of production processing and marketing and intensive research can guarantee the economic wellbeing of a major part of the country's population.

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the fees collected during the Marcos dictatorship are state-owned and should be used solely for the benefit of coconut farmers and the coconut industry.

The tax had been imposed on the farmers of the poverty-wracked industry for their benefit, but the funds were diverted instead to investments, such as in the United Coconut Planters Bank and San Miguel Corp. (ACR/PNA)