Published December 17, 2020, 6:00 AM
On the anticipated release of the P100-billion coco levy fund, another veto is coconut farmers’ last hope after the House version of Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund (Coco Levy Act) was passed on third and final reading and turned out to be “worse than the Senate version of the law”.
That, if President Rodrigo Duterte will not intervene before the law gets through the bicameral, where both houses of Congress will consolidate two versions of Coco Levy Act.
(MB FILE, Keith Bacongco)
“I called the staff of Congressman Mark Enverga [Quezon 1st District and chairman of the House’s agriculture committee] to insert the provisions that we want in the bicam, but if this is not possible, this is the right time for President Duterte to veto the law again,” Pambansang Kilusan ng Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (PKMP) Chairman Eduardo Mora said in a phone interview.
Published December 14, 2020, 5:00 AM
Coconut farmers are questioning some provisions of the Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund Act (Coco Levy Act) such as the annual allocation of portions of the P100-billion coco levy fund to several government agencies, some of which have had no participation in coconut industry development at all.
In a press briefing, Joey Faustino, leader of the Coconut Industry Reform Movement, said coconut farmers are appealing to junk the Senate Bill (SB) 1396 or the Coco Levy Act in fear that they may totally lose the chance to benefit from the P100-billion coco levy fund, which came from the taxes imposed on coconut farmers by the Marcos administration and its cronies from 1972 to 1981.