Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, the former lawmaker’s son, also chairs the Land Bank of the Philippines.
Teves whose company -- Herminio Teves Company, Incorporated (HTCI) in partnership with the Korean based Bio Green Incorporated -- is into jathropa planting at the Tamlang Valley that is already formally presented to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in his recent visit to the province.
Teves said the funding for the jathropa propagation in the Philippines is in consonance with President Arroyo’s pronouncement in reducing the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuel and petroleum.
He said it was not hard to convince Land Bank on the funding because it was President Arroyo who prodded the government-owned bank to fund the cultivation of jathropa on unproductive private and government lands.
Teves cited his own district where he said there are around 15,000 hectares of idle private lands existing outside of over 30,000 denuded public forest lands.
“Same is true in other congressional districts more especially in rural provinces where many privately owned lands are idle that real estate taxes to the local government are not paid,” he added.
Jathropa curcas is a tropical land subtropical tree and is found throughout the Philippines, thus it is best suited that the country undertakes the production of alternative fuel.
Teves said unlike coconut, jathropa can grow in the hinterlands and can be productive after the first year.
“Planting jathropa will make the land and the people in the area productive,” he stressed.
Teves said the advantage of jathropa bio-diesel over the fossil fuel counterpart is that t burns cleaner or emits much lesser pollutants and it is a clean and green renewable energy.
He added that with the help of Land Bank and as envisioned by HTCI, the 45,000 hectares unutilized private and public land when fully planted with jathropa can produce 140,000,000 liters of crude oil with a potential value of P2.56 billion export and or process for domestic use and can further generate a turbine electric power plant that can generate not less than 20 megawatts power.
Supporting the cooperative role of the Land Bank, Teves said that it is imperative to have a jathropa oil processing plant with a steam turbine generator to produce electricity more especially on Negros Island where electric power is not available or very expensive in the area within 100 kilometer radius, adding that the planter can sell the whole ripe fruit to the processor and will earn additional income.
Then, he said, the jathropa processor can sell crude jathropa oil and earn foreign exchange while generating electric power to supply the National Power Corporation (NPC) or electric cooperative at a cheaper cost as jathropa biogas seed cake has 8,188 BTU while dried jathropa hull has 5,983 BTU enough to fuel high pressure boiler for a turbine generator.
