The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) today launched the SPLIT project, with simultaneous inaugural activity at the regional and provincial offices to improve land tenure security and stabilize property rights of about 1,140,735 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) nationwide.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Brother John R. Castriciones said the SPLIT project, which is an acronym for Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling, aims to fast-track land subdivision/parcelization of Collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CCLOAs) and eventually issue individual land titles to ARBs who were previously awarded with lands and collective CLOAs under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). “Many farmers who were granted lands under the country’s agrarian reform program have been waiting for individual land titles. Some have even waited for decades,” he said.
Brother John said the SPLIT project is funded by the World Bank (WB), with a total project cost of PhP 24.625 billion, comprising 78% loan proceeds amounting to PhP 19.240 billion and 22% GOP counterpart amounting to PhP 5.385 billion. He said that the project will be implemented by DAR in 78 provinces in 15 regional offices, covering a total area of 1.368 million hectares, starting this year 2020 until 2024.
Brother John disclosed that the SPLIT project has three components, namely: parcelization of collective CLOAs, capability building and technical assistance and project management, monitoring and evaluation. “During the first year of SPLIT project implementation, initial activities will include inventory of CCLOA, validation, survey of 15,338 hectares, registration and titling of 29,660 CLOAs which is equivalent to 35,592 hectares. Enhanced and improved parcelization procedures and new survey techniques to generate individual titles will be tested in priority regions,” Brother John said
The SPLIT Project will be implemented by DAR in partnership with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Land Registration Authority, Registry of Deeds, Land Bank of the Philippines, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and the Department of Interior and Local Government.
The SPLIT project was approved by the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) – Cabinet Committee on September 27, 2019, confirmed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Board on May 15, 2020 and approved by the World Bank Board on June 26, 2020 for financing. The Loan Agreement for the Project was signed on July14, 2020 between the World Bank and the Government of the Philippines represented by the Secretary of the Department of Finance. The loan became effective October 2020.
