The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Ilocos Norte said 2,371 Collective Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CCLOAs), covering over 13,000 hectares, have already been parcelized into 13,749 individual land titles.

Of the total land titles, the DAR has distributed 2,530 electronic titles (e-titles), covering an area of 2,969 hectares of agricultural lands to 4,291 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) under the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) project, Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer Vic Ines told the Philippine News Agency on Wednesday.

“We are happy that the processing of the individual e-land titles under the Project SPLIT is making progress,” Ines said.

The SPLIT project aims to fast-track the subdivision of CCLOAs to allow farmer-beneficiaries to have full ownership and possession of the land they are cultivating.

It is funded by the World Bank and is aimed at subdividing around 1.38 million hectares of CCLOA nationwide.

Ines said they have increased the number of personnel who will work on the validation of the CCLOA, noting that the five-year project is set to end this year.

“The validation will be finished within the first semester this year but the registration and distribution (of the individual titles) will depend on the approval of the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) based on the subdivision process as well as the registration of the titles with the ROD (Registry of Deeds),” he said in Filipino.

DAR-Ilocos Norte’s SPLIT project implementation ranked fifth across all Parcelization indicators covering the 2023 National SPLIT project implementation.

Ilocos Region is among the first regions included in the project. The other regions are Region 8 (Eastern Visayas) and Region 9 (Zamboanga del Norte). (PNA)