REVERSED LUNCH: More to TADECO than meets the eye

You simply cannot put a good man down. For were the joint venture agreement between the Bureau of Prisons and the Tagum Agricultural Development Company subjected to a province-wide voting tomorrow, expect the outcome to be overwhelming in favor of the JVA.

A portent of what to expect was the decision of the provincial board of Davao del Norte to express full and unqualified support to the Bucor-Tadeco agreement.

The overwhelming reason: the massive social and economic impact that Tadeco’s operation has brought out to the province.

Board Member Vicente C. Eliot, Sr. said the JVA has been partly instrumental in the transformation of the province into a booming agricultural territory.

For his part, Board Member Roy J. Catalan cited the invaluable role it plays in rehabilitating inmates before their reintegration into mainstream society as well as the educational assistance extended to thousands of students, and the employment given to those employed by the company and benefitting from the existence of the plantation.

There is more than meets the eye to Tadeco and it is for good. Consider this: Tagum Agricultural Development Co., Inc., the world’s largest and most contiguous banana plantation, paid four local government units close to P160 million in form of business tax, real property tax, and other fees from 2012 to 2016,

The tax beneficiaries are Panabo City and the towns of Carmen, Santo Tomas, and B.E. Dujali, all within the jurisdiction of the province of Davao del Norte.

Audited records of the company showed that Panabo, a third-class city ratified in 2001 and one of three urban centers in the province, received P77 million during the five-year period.

On the other hand, the towns of Carmen, Santo Tomas and B.E. Dujali got P11.75 million, P30.5 million, and P39.4 million, respectively.

Overall, the LGUs received in the last five years (2012-16) from Tadeco payments amounting to P158,630,722 or an annual average of P55.57 million.

TADECO PAYMENTS BY LGU (2012-16)

By LGU share, Panabo City received an average of P15.4 in taxes and other payments; municipality of Carmen, PhP2.35 million; municipality of Santo Tomas, PhP30.5 million; and municipality of B.E. Dujali, PhP31.7 million.

Tadeco’s 2016 contribution to Panabo City, which earned PhP955.7 million from local taxes that same, was equivalent to 6.2 percent of the city’s revenues, exclusive of the internal revenue allotment (IRA) and other outside incomes.

Historically, the town of Dujali was created as result of the substantial taxes earned from Tadeco, while Panabo, because of its hefty income, mainly from payments done by the Floirendo-owned company, qualified it for elevation from town to city.

For the towns of Santo Tomas and Carmen, which were largely undeveloped settlements prior to the banana boom in the 1970’s, their fast-paced growth in recent years could be attributed to the banana farms, the IRA, and the rise as plantation economies.

TOTAL TADECO PAYMENTS TO LGUs (2012-16)

The four LGUs, incidentally, host all the farms developed and cultivated by Tadeco which, in recent months, was dragged into allegations it is managing the sprawling Davao Prisons and Penal Farm estate to the disadvantage of the government and the plantation workers ill-treated and exploited.

No other banana plantation in Davao del Norte has been contributing immensely to the development of the province through taxes and fees, scholarship, inmates’ rehabilitation, and the productive cultivation of government lands once labelled as idle and abandoned.

Although the legislative inquiry conducted by the House of Representatives has yet to be completed, other branches of the government had already came out with their opinion recommending the nullification of the joint venture agreement Tadeco had signed with the Bureau of Corrections, the supervisory agency overlooking the condition of the prison lands.

The closure of Tadeco, if pushed, will not only result in massive displacement, loss of jobs, closure of businesses that are dependent on banana, and the hard impact on the productivity of the banana industry in Davao del Norte, but is expected to stunt the development efforts of the city and towns directly benefitting from the joint venture.