Hanoi (VNA) - The Philippines and the World Bank have signed a loan agreement worth 370 million USD for a project to support local farmers, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Philippines’ Department of Finance (DOF) as saying on July 20.
The loan agreement was signed recently by Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Achim Fock, who is the WB's acting country director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.
The project aims to speed up the process of splitting about 1.4 million hectares of land covered by the country’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and then providing individual titles to these parcelised lots to some 750,000 farmers.
"The SPLIT project will improve the bankability of farmers and enable them to access credit and government assistance," Dominguez was quoted by Xinhua News Agency.
The loan will support the Philippines' economic recovery programme, added Dominguez.
The government has redistributed about 4.8 million hectares of land to some 2.8 million agrarian reform beneficiaries under the reform programme, but only 53 percent were in the form of individual land titles./.
