Land use bill, pending in Congress for long, not on Sona list. Why?

IT’S complicated.

T hat may have been the reason the President left out the passage of the National Land Use Act (Nalua) in his list of priority bills this year, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

T he bill has been languishing in Congress for over three decades. The annual appeal of former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte in all of his State of the Nation Addresses (SONAs) did not work to turn the bill into reality.

L ast year, President Marcos Jr. also included the Nalua in his first SONA but his appeal to Congress still did not work. This year, the Nalua was not included in the short list but in a longer list, according to Neda Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan.

“ In the longer list, the National Land Use is there, [but] it’s more complicated...than some of these other proposals. We’ve been trying to pass the National Land Use for so many decades. But the tension of local vs national, that’s what’s causing the (delay),” Balisacan told reporters on the sidelines of the Post-SONA Briefing.

B alisacan also said the Nalua is still included in the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2023-2028 and the list of priority legislation crafted by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac). This only means that the Nalua is still a priority and the Marcos government is not giving up on the passage of the law.

T he Socioeconomic Planning

Secretary also believes it’s just a matter of time before the Nalua is passed. Balisacan noted that the President has a lot of political capi-