Law Summary
Objectives and Purpose of the Corporation
- Facilitate acquisition, settlement, and cultivation of public or private lands.
- Provide opportunities for tenant farmers, small farmers from congested areas, and trained military personnel to own farms.
- Encourage migration to sparsely populated regions and promote national integration.
- Develop new cash crops to replace export crops losing preferential status in the American market.
Powers and Functions of the Corporation
- Hold unlimited public agricultural lands for maximum periods of 25 years, renewable once.
- Recommend presidential reservation of public lands, particularly those along national highways.
- Organize clearing, cultivation, surveying, and subdivision of lands on cooperative or beneficial terms for settlers.
- Allocate areas for town sites, roads, government buildings, parks, and other public improvements.
- Charge survey and subdivision expenses pro rata against settlers.
- Dispose lands to qualified persons per constitutional and legal requirements.
- Land restrictions include a maximum holding of 24 hectares per settler, with conditions on alienation and mortgage within 10 years after grant.
- Prohibition on officers/employees acquiring land in reservations without Board approval.
- Recruit settlers proportionally from provinces, with redistribution if quotas unfilled.
- Acquire private lands adjoining public lands for roads and development.
- Enter contractual arrangements advantageous to settlers and government interests.
- Establish credit agencies to lend to settlers secured by land rights, crops, or improvements, at interest not exceeding 6% per annum.
- Operate utilities and services such as electric light, water systems, irrigation, trading stores, and cooperatives for settlers’ welfare.
- Act as agent or broker in marketing settlers’ products.
- Raise funds, including borrowing and issuing bonds, secured by corporation properties.
- Engage in manufacturing and other necessary businesses to support land settlement projects.
- Adopt uniform rules and regulations to implement the Act.
Governance Structure and Meetings
- The Board elects its chairman from among its members.
- A quorum is three members.
- Non-government official members receive per diems up to thirty pesos per attended meeting day.
Management Appointments and Compensation
- The Board appoints a Manager with President’s approval; compensation capped at eighteen thousand pesos per annum.
- Manager hires technical and clerical staff, subject to Board approval.
- Appointments with salaries of two thousand four hundred pesos or more require Presidential approval.
Capitalization and Funding
- Capital stock of the Corporation is twenty million pesos, subscribed by the Government.
- Appropriations come from coconut oil excise tax proceeds or other government funds.
- Annual appropriations limited to four million pesos with Board and President approval.
Reporting and Accountability
- Annual reports and balance sheets must be submitted to the President and National Assembly.
- Reporting follows provisions of the Administrative Code sections 574 to 577 inclusive.
Effectivity
- The Act takes effect immediately upon approval on June 3, 1939.