P57b in agri debt wiped clean as PBBM inks new law

By Charles Dantes and Macon Ramos-Araneta

THE signing of the new agrarian reform act by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. came full circle on Friday, 50 years after his father, the late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., signed Presidential Decree 27 in 1972.

Republic Act No. 11953 or the New Agrarian Reform Act signed by the President Friday condones all unpaid amortizations of the principal debt of agrarian reform beneficiaries worth P57.56 billion.

These farmers were tilling a total of 1.17 million hectares of agrarian reform lands.

The New Agrarian Emancipation

Act was part of the priority measures the President asked Congress to pass in his first State of the Nation Address last July 25, 2022.

During the press briefing, the President said that he is continuing his father's previous work, pointing out that it was always his late father's intention to give land to farmers and farm workers.

Presidential Decree 27 was signed by Mr. Marcos Sr. and the minister of the Department of Agrarian Reform, Conrado Estrella Sr.

Under the decree, the tenant farmer, whether in land classified as landed estate or not, was deemed owner of a portion constituting a family-size farm of five hectares if not irrigated and three hectares if irrigated.

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