A National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) official has lamented that part of the delay in the passage of the National Land Use Act (NLUA) is the failure of the Senate to discuss the bill.
Neda Regional Development Office Undersecretary Adoracion M. Navarro said there are currently five Senate Bills on the NLUA but no consolidated bill has yet been drafted to date.
The House of Representatives, however, already have House Bill No. 5240, which was approved on final reading in May 2, 2017. In the Senate, the five bills are Senate Bills 25, 34, 1144, 1015, and 1522.
“Why the National Land Use bills are not progressing at the Senate? Part of my answer: The Senate committee [headed by Sen. Cynthia Villar] handling it is not scheduling the discussion,” Navarro said in a recent Tweet.
The President mentioned in his State of the Nation Address in July the need to pass the NLUA, which has been languishing in Congress for the past 20 years.
The NLUA aims to protect prime agricultural lands, provide rationalized land use planning in the country, consolidate national laws on land uses, and to address long-standing land use conflicts.
In 2016, in a report to the United Nations, the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) said passing an effective land-use policy as well as the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (DHUD) are crucial in meeting the challenges of rapid urbanization.
The Philippines’ efforts to pass a NLUA has been futile for the past two decades despite making the proposed law a priority legislation.
Passing a land use act will be crucial in pushing for the adoption of the “Avoid-Shift-Improve Framework.”
The “avoid” part of the framework underscores the need for better land use planning and travel demand management.
The “shift” and “improve” parts will encourage the use of sustainable means of transport—non-motorized and public transport and consider vehicle and fuel efficiency.
The creation of a land use policy will also be crucial since the vehicle to population ratio in the country has also tripled over the span of 22 years.
HUDCC said that in 2012, the total registered vehicles were 7.5 million units. This was almost 4.5 times the total number of vehicles registered in 1990.
Of these registered vehicles, more than 50 percent were motorcycles/tricycles and 27 percent of these were found in Metro Manila.
The report stated that the average growth per year in the number of vehicles from 1990 to 2012 is 2.99 percent for cars, 5.01 percent for utility vehicles, and 16.18 percent for sports utility vehicles.
The annual growth for trucks was 4.54 percent; buses, 3.11 percent; motorcycles, 11.47 percent; and trailers, 3.53 percent.