DAR to extend issuance of individual land titles beyond 2024

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said Thursday it is working on extending the implementation of its Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) project for two more years. 

During the Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon briefing, DAR Undersecretary Kazel Celeste said that SPLIT — which involves the government's subdivision of about 1.38 million hectares of collective land titles into individual land titles — is supposed to end this year.

“Ang SPLIT project actually ay may expiration ‘yan hanggang 2024. But we are working it out to have it extended for another two years dahil sa nangyaring pandemya, maraming na-halt na operations natin,” she said. 

(The SPLIT project has an expiration of until 2024. But we are working it out to have it extended for another two years because many of our operations were halted due to the pandemic.) 

According to DAR, SPLIT is the “final chapter of the longest-running Agrarian Reform Program,” covering 5 million hectares of land for almost 3 million agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) nationwide.

Aside from the national government, this project is also partially funded by the World Bank.

“We started this Project SPLIT para ma-parcelize natin ‘yung mga collected CCLOAS (Collective Certificate of Land Ownership Awards) na ito so that our ARBs will be able to have their own individual titles na nakapangalan sa kanila,” Celeste said. 

(We started Project SPLIT to parcelize the collected CCLOAS so that our ARBs will be able to have their own individual titles that are named after them.) 

President Ferdinand ''Bongbong'' Marcos Jr. on Wednesday expressed hope that the number of land titles that will be distributed to ARBs would be doubled.

DAR distributed around 2,500 e-titles covering an aggregate area of approximately 3,560 hectares on Wednesday. —KBK, GMA Integrated News