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The peasantry is at a loss on how to react to the barrage of recent
press statements from the Land Bank of the Philippines. Do we just
keep our peace? Or react angrily and burn effigies of Gilda Pico,
the LBP president, after a protest at the bank headquarters?
All the press statements that stated the
supposed commitment of the Land Bank to rice production and
agricultural development through generous loans are lies, wrapped in
half-truths, packaged in obfuscation.
The Land Bank has never cared about farmers and
lending to small farmers. Not under Pico and definitely not under
her immediate predecessor, the current finance secretary, Margarito
Teves. A serious congressional inquiry on the roots of the current
rice crisis in the country would reveal that the Teves-Pico lending
priorities should be held accountable for the rice crisis.
It is the Land Bank’s mandate to support small
farmers. It is there in bold print. In fact the primary mandate of
the bank is to support agrarian reform beneficiaries and small
farmers. Yet, the Teves-Pico lending policies shut the farmers out
of the lending loop, completely and with extreme prejudice. When you
shut out farmers from the lending loop, you cripple rice production
directly.
The peasant group to which I belong, Butil, has
been carrying out its own examination on the state of agricultural
lending, specifically the access of small rice farmers to formal
credit, which principally means the LBP, which is supposed to be the
bank of farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries. The feedback on
loans granted by the bank is enough to send us into an
effigy-burning rage.
For example, the Land Bank granted a P1-billion
loan to a steel company. Then it granted another P1 billion to a
supermarket chain based in the southern Philippines.
Its lending to farmer Juan de la Cruz? Zero.
The Land Bank gets away with denying the
peasantry of much-needed credit by cooking its loan entries. It
routinely reports that billions upon billions in loans are being
pumped into supporting projects under the Agricultural and Fisheries
Modernization Act.
These are agri-business loans, loans to giant
corporations engaged in agri-business. Not a single centavo goes to
small farmers or small-scale rice production.
The nomenclature is impressive but in reality
nothing goes to small farmers.
The loans that are being entered in the books as
loans to rice and corn farmers are loans to multi-millionaire rice
mill owners. Or yellow corn distributors and traders. This is, to be
very kind about it, deceptive.
Technically, the Land Bank can claim fidelity to
its charter and mandate, generically lending to agriculture. But in
the real world, this is not so. It has been extending generous loans
to agri-business giants, which belong to the country’s blue-chip
corporations that can raise money through the stock market.
But it does not support small farmers and
agrarian reform beneficiaries, even in a small way, through
peripheral gestures. Obsessed with and motivated by profit, it has
been mocking its very own charter by denying the small rice farmers
of production loans.
The Butil leaders have asked Ka Nellie Chavez,
our representative in the House, to initiate a congressional inquiry
on two issues. First is the Land Bank’s brazen violation of its
lending mandate. Second is the general failure of the banking system
to follow the spirit and intent of the Agri-Agra Law, which requires
the commercial banking system to lend 25 percent of its yearly loan
portfolio to agriculture and agrarian reform beneficiaries.
The Land Bank and the banking system cannot go
on shafting the peasantry and rubbing salt on our open wounds via
those hypocritical statements that claim they are ready to help us
and that there are loans for us.
Enough is enough.
In the draft speech prepared by the Butil
leaders sent to Ka Nellie for approval, her call for a congressional
inquiry on agricultural lending would open with these words,
borrowed literally from Crying Jun Lozada:
The Land Bank should moderate its greed and
profit motive. And redirect its loans to us, the wretched farmers.
We hope Ka Nellie will take the floor and spill
out our heart-rending story.
mvrong@yahoo.com
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