The World Bank has noted improved implementation of an extended loan that supports breaking down collective certificates of land ownership awards (CLOAs), or titles given to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in the Philippines.

In an Aug. 21 implementation status and results report seen by Manila Bulletin, the Washington-based multilateral lender upgraded the overall implementation progress (IP) of the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project, being implemented by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), to “moderately satisfactory” from “moderately unsatisfactory” previously.

The World Bank also upgraded the progress toward achieving the project development objective (PDO), which is to improve land tenure security and stabilize property rights of ARBs, to “moderately satisfactory” from “moderately unsatisfactory.”

However, the World Bank said the project’s overall risk rating remains “substantial.”

To date, more than half, or $192.32 million, of the $370-million loan approved by the World Bank for SPLIT back in 2020 has been disbursed.

“Implementation activities continue in all project regions,” the World Bank said, noting that the project loan was restructured in December last year to extend its closing date to Dec. 31, 2027.

“As of July 15, 2025, a total of 128,263 collective CLOAs are validated by the field validation teams. This represents an accomplishment of 128 percent, surpassing the target of 80 percent. DAR’s target is to validate a total of 138,567 collective CLOAs,” the report read.

Also as of mid-July this year, 163,176 individual titles have been issued, or nearly 22 percent of the targeted up to 750,000 ARBs, the lender said.

“Out of the total individual titles issued to date, 84 percent have female names on them,” it added. The project targets 45 percent of titles issued to have female names, either as the primary beneficiary or co-owner.

In December last year, Manila Bulletin reported that the World Bank financing for the SPLIT Project was one of two loans obtained by the Duterte administration that the current Marcos Jr. administration sought to extend due to implementation delays.

At that time, a World Bank project restructuring paper disclosed that of the $370-million investment project financing (IPF) for the SPLIT Project, DAR had spent merely $149.62 million, or just over two-fifths of the proceeds, before the loan was originally scheduled to close on Dec. 31, 2024.

Back then, the World Bank lamented that despite the nearing closing date, the project had suffered from an implementation delay of more than 18 months.

The World Bank had attributed the delayed implementation to five major challenges: the need for significant additional investigation to validate decades-old land allocation information; lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic; delayed and inadequate budget releases for the government’s counterpart financing, which amounted to $103.6 million from 2020 to 2022; multiple procurement setbacks; and the longer-than-expected establishment of key institutional agreements and arrangements, due in part to leadership changes at DAR and its partner-implementing agencies.

For instance, the World Bank had noted that out of the ₱1.2-billion budgetary counterpart requested to implement this DAR project in 2020, only ₱114 million was received. In 2021, its budget was released “six months late and was only nine percent of what was requested (₱1 billion out of ₱12 billion).”

“The delayed and insufficient fund releases led to significant delays in the procurement of field personnel, consultants, and goods. These had a ripple effect since the completion of field validation activities is a prerequisite for the main project activities of survey and titling. The situation improved in 2023 when DAR received its full budget request,” the World Bank had said.

Earlier World Bank documents showed that the SPLIT Project aimed to subdivide or parcelize 1,368,900 hectares (ha) of land in 78 provinces across 15 of the country’s regions.

Citing DAR figures, the World Bank had said that more than 4.9 million ha were distributed to over three million small farmers from 1988 to 2018, of which about 45 percent of the titles were CLOAs.

In the past, DAR had difficulty breaking down CLOAs into individual titles because the process had been cumbersome. Issuing individual titles would give farmers clarity as well as legal proof of the land they own or occupy, according to the World Bank.