President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is set to enact a measure that will unburden farmers from decades-old debts under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, which distributes land to tillers but not for free.

In a statement on Wednesday, Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda (Albay) explained that the proposed New Agrarian Emancipation Act will do this, and more.

The NAEA will condone P58.125 billion, which represents unpaid amortization, interest payments, surcharges, and penalties of existing loans. These loans were held by an estimated 654,000 agrarian reform beneficiaries.

This also covered a total of 1.18 million hectares of land awarded to beneficiaries.

Salceda, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, inserted additional provisions like amnesty for estate tax until 2025 and an exemption covering land transfers to legitimate heirs and successors.

The Senate approved on third and final reading Senate Bill 1850 on March 16.

Marcos Jr. is set to sign this measure into law in a ceremony on Friday, more than two weeks before his second national address.

Issues with agrarian reform The CARP was a policy measure introduced during the time of President Corazon Aquino. The move was intended to reinvigorate agriculture in the country, by redistributing private and public agricultural lands to farmers.

Despite its early success, this left the sector worse for wear. The government did not give Filipino farmers the capital and support services needed to transform the land to become profitable.

That much was evident, as Salceda noted a portion of land awarded to CARP beneficiaries was unproductive.

“CARP without adequate support services and with limited capital or entrepreneurship among farmer-beneficiaries is shown to have reduced agricultural productivity in CARP lands by as much as −34.1% compared to baseline,” he said.

Farmers and fisherfolk are the two poorest sectors of Philippine society, despite accounting for 10% of the country’s gross domestic product annually.

Rep. Wilbert Lee (AGRI Party-list), principal author of the House version of the NAEA, considered the pending passage a “win” for farmers since money to pay the condoned debt can instead be used on the farms.

“Finally, they will be unburdened of their loans, interests, and penalties that contribute to their inability to overcome poverty, and are also major factors that have kept them from becoming fully productive,” Lee added.

Despite this, Sonny Africa, executive director at local nonprofit IBON Foundation, called the move a “belated and imperfect correction of a long-standing defect of agrarian reform in the country.”

“The government also shouldn’t be making a big deal out of ‘condoning’ over P58 billion in arrears that it probably wouldn’t be able to collect anyway because farmers are kept so poor,” he said in a Viber message.