Government sets up registry for coco levy trust fund

MANILA, Philippines — The government has created a registry to record and monitor the use of coconut levy assets as part of efforts to manage the multi-billion peso fund and deploy them for development programs.

The inter-agency Trust Fund Management Committee (TFMC) over the weekend said it set up an asset registry to keep tabs on cash, shares of stock and properties the government acquired through the coco levy trust fund.

The TFMC, which is chaired by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, will use the registry as a repository of information and records of coco levy assets.

The TFMC put up the asset registry to uphold checks and balances in managing the trust fund. The repository will contain separate records of both cash and non-cash assets, and will classify which ones belong to the government and which ones are pending litigation.

The Bureau of the Treasury, as the secretariat of the TFMC, is tasked to handle the asset registry. The agency is mandated, first and foremost, to update it on a regular basis, beginning from the inventory transferred by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG).

In compliance with the law, the PCGG submitted an inventory of coco levy assets worth P113.88 billion in cash, shares of stock and holding and trading firms, including their subsidiaries, to the TFMC.

However, multiple assets held by the PCGG have yet to be transferred to the TFMC, as proper courts have yet to issue their decision on who owns them.

The PCGG reported the inventory it passed on to the TFMC should be considered incomplete, and that the registry should then be used to keep track of the coco levy assets.

Further, the Commission on Audit will review the completeness of the PCGG inventory and look into the flow of coco levy funds. On the other hand, the Department of Justice will take actions to speed up the court battle for non-cash assets.

Dominguez said the ball is now in the hands of the TFMC to manage the use of the trust fund estimated to reach P75 billion. He vowed the committee would report every decision it would make in deploying the coco levy assets for development programs.

Upon approval in February, Republic Act (RA) 11524 directed P10 billion to the coconut farmers and industry trust fund, and will allocate P10 billion in the second year, P15 billion in the third and fourth years, and P25 billion in the fifth year.

RA 11524 sets up a coco levy trust fund that seeks to benefit coconut farmers through the use of taxes collected from them decades ago.