Palace mulls spending P25-B PLDT sale for upland farms

Malacañang on Tuesday said it is mulling the possibility of using the P25-billion proceeds from the sale of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) shares for the development of at least a million hectares of upland farms in a bid to reduce hunger. This came from Planning Secretary Romulo Neri who said the Palace is looking at the legal aspects of his proposal because the PLDT shares are considered part of ill-gotten wealth. This, he explained, means the money should be spent on land reform. Neri said upland development could be interpreted as an “extension" of land reform because government would be giving land to the landless in the rural areas. “We found out based on Asian Development Bank (ADB) surveys that 50 percent of rural folk are landless and jobless, so the opening up of uplands will really open up new frontiers for job generation," he said. Upland development, he said, has been declared by Presdient Arroyo as part of the government’s next round of reforms. The only thing needed to make it work, Neri said, is an all-weather infrastructure. The upland development program involves four million hectares of upland farms at P20,000 per hectare. A million hectares, he said, is immediately available and this would benefit 500,000 farmers. He said based on the Social Weather Stations surveys that 16-19 percent of Filipinos are suffering from hunger or an estimated 10-15 million hungry Filipinos. Hunger, he said, could be attributed this to the series of super typhoons that hit the country, particularly the Bicol area. Neri said government is looking at higher agricultural productivity and restoring the productivity of the coastal areas in order to reduce the hunger incidence - GMANews.TV