Good news for the agricultural sector

A legislative proposal that seeks to further improve the situation of agricultural land owners is on its way to becoming a law.

This, after the Senate approved a bill simplifying the procedure and requirements in getting land titles. The bill had earlier been approved in the House of Representatives where it was sponsored by Reps. Joey Salceda, Kit Belmonte, Rufus Rodriguez and Mike Defensor.

Senate Bill 1931 was certified as urgent by President Duterte last Dec. 15. The bill will allow the continuous titling of public alienable and disposable (A&D) agricultural lands beyond Dec. 31, 2020 to preserve the security of tenure of land claimants and farmers.

At present, landowners are prohibited from selling and mortgaging the land within the first five years of the patent grant and gives the option to the original owners to buy back the property within five years from the date of sale. This has made agricultural patents unbankable since banks do not want to hold property for five years before they can be disposed.

Agricultural free patents are land grants awarded to natural-born Filipino citizens in actual occupation and cultivation for at least 30 years of A&D lands not more than 12 hectares and have paid the corresponding real property taxes.

Earlier, the DENR’s Land Management Bureau issued a notice that community environment and natural resources offices (CENROs) will no longer accept applications beyond the Dec. 31, 2020 deadline set under the Public Land Act of 2002 or Republic Act 9176. This law already extended the filing of applications for free patent and judicial confirmation of imperfect and incomplete titles to public A&D lands, thus amending Commonwealth Act 141 or the original Public Land Act.

The bill aims to address the difficulties in proving ownership by removing the need for the DENR Secretary’s certification by synchronizing and shortening the period of possession required for perfection of imperfect titles from 74 years to 30 years, and by disregarding the Dec. 31, 2020 deadline for the filing of application of agricultural free patents, among others.

According to Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, who sponsored Senate Bill 1931 on the improvement of confirmation of imperfect titles together with Senators Richard Gordon, Joel Villanueva, Juan Miguel Zubiri, and others, PD  1529 or the Property Registration Decree and CA 141, as amended, have a sunset provision on administrative and judicial confirmation of imperfect title. The present law sets Dec. 21, 2020 as the expiration date for the filing of agricultural free patents and judicial confirmation of imperfect title.

He explained that from 1903 to 2002, titling of lands under CA 141 has been extended nine times, while about 100,000 citizens secure titles to their lands through confirmation process per year since 1976.

Angara pointed out that an estimated two to 4.8 million parcels of land have  yet to be titled and would be directly affected if the law is not extended.

He said that the required period of possession under the law prior to confirmation is too long. For instance, Section 48 of CA 141 requires possession since June 12, 1945 or a period of 75 years for judicial confirmation of title, while Section 44 of the same law requires possession and cultivation since 1960 or 60 years for administrative adjudication of title under agricultural free patent. RA 6940, which amended Section 44 in 1990, requires 30 years possession prior to the effectivity of the law.

Angara said that applicants find it hard to comply with the documentary and testimonial requirements to prove this, and applications are denied due to the very rigid process of judicial confirmation of title.

He explained that the Supreme Court’s recent interpretation of the requirement to prove that the land is A&D is too tedious to comply with since the DENR Secretary’s signature in the certification is required. This has resulted in a deluge in the request for the DENR Secretary’s signature in all court proceedings filed throughout the country.

Angara stressed the urgency of passing the bill since the deadline for filing of free patent applications expires Dec. 20 this year. And because of the pandemic, about 100,000 free patent applications have been affected due to the disruption in titling since March.

He said that the law would benefit an estimated 4.8 million families who are longtime occupants of A&D lands and would otherwise be forced to transact their lands in the informal market. These citizens, he said, have no other option to legalize their ownership of the lands that they occupied and used for generations.

He said that the lapse of the filing of free patent and judicial confirmation of title would affect the agricultural sector in the countryside since most of the agricultural free patents come from the provinces. Land titles, Angara said, are the most common collateral used in the capital scarce countryside, and access to capital by farmers entrepreneur would be greatly affected if they cannot title their lands anymore.

He noted that the shortening of the period of possession would encourage titling since it would become easier for landowners to secure land titles. The shorter period would mostly help the poor since the documentary and testimonial evidence to support possession would become easier, he said.

For his part, Sen. Gordon, who co-authored the bill and chairs the Senate committee on justice, said that if no law is passed to extend or remove the period of application, no new agricultural free patents can be issued by DENR and poor rural farmers may not be able to title their lands. By allowing farmers to have property rights by securing land titles, they are given the opportunity to improve their lives since they can use land as collateral in order to borrow more capital, he said.

Last February 2019, Duterte signed into law the Agricultural Free Patent Reform Act, which unfortunately failed to address other problems encountered by free patent. This removed the five-year prohibition on selling and mortgaging, as well as the five-year right to repurchase the patents by the original owner -- which for several decades has discouraged banks from lending to owners these types of property.  The law also prohibited corporations, associations, and partnerships from acquiring and owning agricultural free patents.

The reform of  the agricultural free patent system took many years and several amendments to the law, but now it will be over with the current proposal allowing the filing of free patent applications anytime since it will no longer be subject to a time limitation.

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