Senator Edgardo Angara yesterday called on government to provide the infrastructure that will allow the opening up of more land for sugarcane production to make Negros Occidental the national center for ethanol production, and the regional center for call centers and other outsourced jobs.

Angara, who was campaigning in Negros Occidental yesterday, also said he is supporting a call for a review of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. Agrarian reform is a good concept and has succeeded in countries where it has been implemented properly like Japan, Taiwan and Korea, he said.

Governments of those countries did not stop at just distributing land to occupants they supported them with credit, fertilizer and inputs, he said.

The problem with the agrarian reform system in the Philippines is that we just got obsessed with distributing the land, and maybe more than one half of the land distributed under the agrarian reform law no longer belong to the original recipients, he said.

Many of them cannot live on 1.8 hectares, he said.

Meanwhile, there are so many vast public lands that can be distributed and we should have started doing that with all the proper support and credit, he said.

But we implemented agrarian reform on already developed lands breaking up productive capacity of the land, Angara added.

"And worst, we said in the law that the land cannot be mortgaged and the bank cannot foreclose it drying up land development," he said.

"Two years ago we should have already reviewed the implementation of agrarian reform, we must seriously review it and think of an alternative way of providing land to tenants who have no land," he said.

BIOFUELS ACT

Meanwhile, Angara said that Bio-Fuels Act, which Team Unity candidate Miguel Zubiri pushed vigorously at the House of Representative, provides the proper environment and the incentives for the development of fuel sources from local crops such as sugarcane, which is produced in abundance in Negros Occidental.

"In terms of preparedness, there is no area more ideal for ethanol production than Negros Occidental. There is no reason why it cannot be the national center for bio-fuels processing," Angara said.

Government can help Negros Occidental become a national center for ethanol production by providing road systems to improve logistics, and by subsidizing interest rates in the acquisition of trucking facilities, he said.

He also said more areas in Negros Occidental, especially in the south, can also be opened up for further production of sugarcane for ethanol.

Government can also provide more money for research to adopt the biofuel technology, especially of Brazil, to Philippine conditions, he said.

Angara said other countries that have intensified their production of bio-fuels are now reaping several benefits, from being less dependent on fossil fuels to pollution reduction.

"Brazil has shown the way in ethanol production. It processes a substantial part of its sugarcane production into ethanol. As much as 60 percent of its fuel imports had been cut down due to the massive use of ethanol," Angara said

With biofuels we can reduce our dependence of fossil fuel from 70 percent to about 50 percent, by tapping the country's potential for green energy, he said.

Angara also said he will continue to fight sugar smuggling to protect the domestic sugar industry.

IN BACOLOD

Angara also said Bacolod City, which is home to topnotch colleges and universities, is well-prepared to host contact centers, medical transcription activities and other business process outsourcing jobs.

"Bacolod City has awesome natural assets and a vast pool of highly-educated and highly-trained manpower. It is a highly-competitive city based on the established benchmarks of competitiveness. Government's role should focus on enhancing these awesome assets, " Angara said.

"The government can easily market Bacolod as a leading BPO Center in Western Visayas," Angara said.

Angara said that BPOs require skills "that are well-developed in Bacolod City and other major urban areas in the country.

The multi-cultural environment in Bacolod City is another attraction that BPO providers will consider in their business expansion plans, he added.*CPG

back to top