CALBAYOG CITY, Samar – Senator Cynthia Villar urges coconut farmers to registered with the Philippine Coconut Authority to avail of government assistance once the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Act is signed into law.
“Coconut farmers who are registered are the ones who can avail the assistance from the government through the Trust Fund, that is why they need to register,” the chair of the Senate committee on agriculture and food said.
The government has PHP8 billion deposited in bank under the coco levy fund, including the PHP30 billion worth of assets that will be used to finance the program meant to assist families of coconut farmers.
The amount will be used for shared facilities program, scholarship program, empowerment of coconut farmer organizations and their cooperatives, and farm improvements.
The government will also include in the General Appropriations Act PHP10 billion a year to fund the construction of infrastructure program like farm-to-market roads, planting and replanting, intercropping, shared facilities, research and development, fertilization, new products and marketing, and credit through Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines.
The Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Act is one of the priority legislative measures pushed by President Rodrigo Duterte during his State of the Nation Address.
Once signed by the President, it will take about six months before the new law is fully implemented and expected to benefit about 3.5 million coconut farmers.
Villar, who was in this city Saturday, urged coconut farmers in poverty-stricken Eastern Visayas region not just to focus on copra, considering its unstable price in the global market, but also learn to process coconut to make new product that you can sell in higher price.
From second in 1997 to 2011, the region slipped to third rank in 2012 and fourth rank in 2013 among coconut-producing regions in the country.
The devastation of super typhoon Yolanda in Nov. 8, 2013 severely affected the coconut industry resulting in the region's slip into sixth place in 2014.
Around 33 million trees were either partially damage or totally damaged by the super typhoon.
Typhoon Ruby that struck the region in the later part of 2014 also caused damaged to at least 200,000 coconut trees. (PNA)
