Consultative committee (Con-com) member Arthur N. Aguilar said the Subcommittee on Economic Reforms (SER) is eyeing to retain the existing provision on foreign ownership restriction on land.

Aguilar noted that opening up the country to land ownership by foreigners may lead to uncontrolled increase in land prices, which could result in land becoming unaffordable to most Filipinos. 

Article XII, Section 7, of the 1987 Constitution states that: “Save in cases of hereditary succession, no private lands shall be transferred or conveyed except to individuals, corporations or associations qualified to acquire or hold lands of the public domain.” 

Only Filipino citizens and corporations with at least 60 percent of the capital owned by Filipinos are allowed to acquire or hold lands of the public domain. 

“There was a lot of debate on that because our neighbors in [the] Association of Southeast Asian Nations [are] more liberal in ownership of land,” Aguilar said in a radio interview over the weekend. 

But in a separate interview with the BusinessMirror, Aguilar said the reason behind the “consensus” to retain the provision is because the country has shrinking land while there is an increase in population and demand from mainland Chinese investors. 

“If you free up land here, the prices of real estate would go up, and locals won’t be able to afford anymore,” he said. 

This scenario of increase in land prices also happened in Vancouver, Sydney and London when they opened up their country to foreign ownership of land. Mostly Japanese and Chinese investors were allowed to come in these countries, according to Aguilar. 

“Their investment appetite is so huge and the quantity of our land are so small so that’s why it’s possible that land prices will increase and with too high land prices, we will be neglecting low-cost housing, medium-cost housing for OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] and then it would distort our market,” he added.

The SER will be submitting the new Article on National Economy to the committee en banc on May 22.