During congressional field hearing, USAID announces new five-year award, with up to $10.6 million dedicated during the first year, to jump start inclusive economic growth in the Philippines - with property rights as a focal point

POMONA, CA - Today, USAID Assistant Administrator for Asia Jonathan Stivers announced the launch of a new development effort in the Philippines - with property rights as a focal point - that aims to spark inclusive economic growth outside the national capital region and aid poverty alleviation efforts. The five-year mechanism will support up to $48 million in programming, subject to the availability of funds, with up to $10.6 million dedicated during the first year, and includes a focus on tackling insecure property rights - which have been recognized as a key constraint to inclusive economic growth in the Philippines, where one in five people live in extreme poverty.

The announcement occurred during a U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific field hearing focused on property rights issues in Southeast Asia. Stivers served as a U.S. Government witness at the hearing, held at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, alongside James Carouso, U.S. Department of State Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

The new project, called "Strengthening Urban Resilience for Growth with Equity" (SURGE), is the flagship project of USAID's Cities Development Initiative (CDI), which was designed in 2012 to help disperse economic opportunities outside the national capital area and fuel inclusive economic growth. CDI aims to develop economic growth hubs in a select number of outlying cities that attract increased investment and generate increased employment and incomes. A key component of SURGE will be helping targeted cities with urban land use planning and zoning, improving land management information and coordination at the local level, and strengthening the capacity of land management offices to secure land and access rights. Other key focus areas of SURGE will promote low-emission growth strategies and address issues that impede employment generation, lack of competitiveness and weak urban-to-rural linkages.

"Strengthening land rights - and the rule of law that protects them - are central to USAID's mission of ending extreme poverty and promoting resilient, democratic societies," Stivers said. "In the Philippines, despite achieving high year-on-year economic growth rates, unemployment remains high, national poverty levels have scarcely budged, and income inequality persists outside of the national capital region. By emphasizing the importance of secure property rights to inclusive economic growth, SURGE will help promote broad-based growth that helps lift the world's most vulnerable people out of poverty."

In the Philippines, the U.S. Government's Partnership for Growth has supported collaboration with the Government of the Philippines to address the country's most serious constraints to inclusive and lasting growth - of which protecting secure land rights is key. In urban areas in particular, the results of a recent USAID assessment identified overlapping land claims, unclear property rights and lengthy resolution to land disputes as key constraints to development. Due to parallel registration through judicial and administrative processes, multiple claims to the same property can occur, limiting access to reliable information and creating the potential for conflict and vast opportunities for corruption. Further, only an estimated 50 percent of land parcels in the Philippines are formally registered in the Torrens Title System. This is due in part to the high cost of property registration and the fact that routine registry processes like correcting clerical mistakes, issuing lost titles and weeding out fraudulent certificates require lengthy court processes that can last for years. In addition, there is a large backlog of cases of all types in the court system, which contributes to the high cost of litigation. Some 90 percent of the cases (of which 17 percent were land disputes) handled by the Supreme Court in 2012 took more than 20 years to make their way through the system of hearings and appeals to higher courts.

USAID has partnered with the people and Government of the Philippines on property rights for decades, helping to advance secure land rights for marginalized peoples, improve the regulatory environment and land registration processes, increase coordination across overlapping mandates and expedite the issuance of land titles, and streamline litigation procedures and address bottlenecks in the court system.

For more information on USAID's land tenure efforts in Southeast Asia, please see Stivers' full hearing statement submitted for the record. For more information on the Cities Development Initiative, please visit this page of USAID's website.