Thursday, April 10, 2008 Zubiri says family won’t benefit from Biofuels law
ALTHOUGH he admits his family is into sugar production, Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri denied they stand to gain from the Biofuels Law.
He also denied they are evading the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp), which according to a report by Vera Files, is the agenda of lawmakers whose families own vast agricultural lands.
“I abhor the maliciousness of the Vera report by suggesting that my family today would greatly benefit from the Biofuels Law. How could we when all our lands have been voluntarily, let me repeat, voluntarily given to the Carp and whatever land left to us allowed by the law to retain, we leased to Dole for banana productions for the last four years—definitely, before the law was approved in 2006 so there is no conflict of interest,” Zubiri said in a faxed statement to Sun.Star Cebu.
Classification
He said that if the authors did any serious investigating and visited the area, they will “see the obvious that it’s all planted with bananas and that the provincial assessor has not updated its records.”
“The remaining eight hectares of land cannot be classified as a plantation but a modest farm. What saddens me the most is our family complied with the Carp law since 1988 and supported its turnover to farmer beneficiaries. (We were) one of the first to do this and yet, the story pictures our family as sugar barons—a blatant lie,” Zubiri’s statement read.
“Instead of being congratulated for being the first to comply with the Carp law, we are now being maligned by the Vera article and those behind their agenda,” the statement read.
Zubiri said that the insinuation that his father has “some control” in the Bukidnon Sugar Milling Company (Busco) is “completely false.”
He said his family severed ties with Busco since 1988.
“Since then, it has been owned by Filipino-Chinese businessmen and whatever transaction they do, either on sugar or ethanol, is their business and we have nothing to do with it,” Zubiri also said.
Conversion
He wants it put on record that there is no provision in the Biofuels Act that would violate or shortcut the Carp.
“I wish that the authors of the story had read the law which will show nothing on land conversion and exemptions from Carp. On the contrary, the beneficiaries tilling three hectares of sugar land will benefit from the higher value and pricing of their sugar crops for biofuels. What frustrates me is that it seems we have become a nation of fault-finders,” Zubiri’s statement read.
“The issue here is fuel. Do we produce it? Negative. Are we ready to survive if oil imports stop? Negative. Do we have alternatives to that? Yes, we do but are we prepared to implement them?” he added.
The senator said that the production of biofuels will not affect food supply since there is an oversupply of sugarcane.
Independence
“The worst part of it all is that we have not even implemented the biofuels program and we have an impending food crisis—a double whammy. We have no food nor fuel independence and yet, we like to find fault on the solutions proposed to counter these problems. Well, if by next month gas prices will be at P50 per liter and by next year it will reach P70 per liter and you curse the high heavens, please don’t blame the government but the fault-finders,” he added. (CYR)
