Use coco levy as ‘perpetual fund’

I was born to a family of a small coconut farm owner.  During the martial law days, my late father, who described himself as a farmer, used to receive “tickets” from the sale of copra (coconut meat smoked and sun-dried for processing into oil). For some time, he also did copra trading, as a small-time comprador.

As a school grader, I had the chance to experience using the weighing scale, drying copra in the sun, filling a sack with copra and, sometimes, climbing a pile of copra that rose to the ceiling. My octogenarian mother has to this day those coconut-related “shares of stock” of insignificant amount, which were distributed through the local chapter of the Cocofed.

My childhood memories somehow help me relate to the prospects of the coco levy funds—up to now a raging contentious issue preoccupying the Supreme Court and the legislative houses—being directly used for uplifting the lot of thousands of coconut farmers and their children out there who could barely eke out a decent means of survival and a shot at good life in the future.  I and my siblings, by stroke of luck and perseverance, have gone past the life of being children of a small coconut farmer.  But I will always relish the thought of and consider myself being a son of one.  I still consider it no mean feat to be able to climb, in my youth, a coconut tree on my bare feet; something that my son and nephews will never get to experience. So I have this wish list not for myself but for the countless coconut farmers and their children who deserve no less direct benefits from the coco levy funds.

I have read the proposed Recto bill. It would have been impressive if not for the fact that the proposal would deplete the funds and deprive the unborn generation of children of coconut farmers of the same benefits. Too, the funds are being proposed to rehabilitate the coconut industry.

My sense is: The rehabilitation of the coconut industry should not be visited upon the coconut farmers.  It should be borne by the national government; after all, the trading of copra and its related processed products generates taxes. Instead, the coconut levy funds should be exclusively used for the direct benefits of the coconut farmers and their children in terms of scholarships, health insurance benefits and housing benefits.

Here’s how it could be done: Convert the P71-billion coco levy funds into a “perpetual fund” to be managed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).  It should be a guaranteed fund management to ensure that it would not be depleted. The BSP can convert and manage it as an infrastructure fund available to local government units and other national government agencies, to be secured by IRA (internal revenue allotment)-intercept scheme in the case of the LGUs, and by a government guarantee in the case of national government agencies. The fund could be set up to generate a guaranteed tax-free return of 6 percent per annum, which would give the coconut farmers, as direct beneficiaries, at least P350 million in monthly earnings. Imagine how many coconut farmers and their children would be benefited by such an amount in terms of scholarships, health insurance and housing benefits!

—FRANK E. LOBRIGO,

[email protected]