Commonwealth Act No. 182

Also known as: CA 182 · The NDC charter of 1936 — the descriptive styling · An Act To Create a Public Corporation To Be Known as the "National Development Company," To Define its Powers — the long title · The statute that dissolved the Compañía de Fomento Nacional — the succession styling, from the 1919 company's original name

Government

Definition

Commonwealth Act No. 182 — long title “An Act To Create a Public Corporation To Be Known as the ‘National Development Company,’ To Define its Powers” — approved on November 13, 1936 and effective January 1, 1937, is the Commonwealth statute that dissolved the old National Development Company of Act No. 2849 and vested its estate in a new ₱50-million public corporation of the same name, the corporate investment arm through which the Philippine state has owned and seeded enterprises ever since. (LawPhil — CA 182) Section 5 of the Act recites the succession plainly: “The National Development Company, created under Act Numbered Twenty-eight hundred and forty-nine, is hereby dissolved,” its properties, assets, obligations, and contracts passing to the new corporation in exchange for shares equal to the old company’s net book value; Section 2 fixed the capital stock “of fifty million pesos” in five hundred thousand ₱100 shares, of which “fifty-one per centum, at least” must be subscribed by the government; and Section 6 repealed Acts Nos. 2849 and 2873. (LawPhil — CA 182)

The statute gave the Commonwealth its development-finance design. Section 4 seated a five-member Board of Directors — the Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce and the Secretary of Finance ex officio, plus three presidential appointees confirmed by the Commission on Appointments, with the President designating the Chairman — and Section 3 armed the corporation to hold public agricultural and mineral lands beyond the limits allowed private corporations, to contract loans and issue bonds, to acquire and dispose of property, and to buy, hold, and vote the shares of other corporations, under the proviso that it “shall not engage in such activities as to bring it into competition with private enterprises” unless the public interest requires. (LawPhil — CA 182) It is under that shareholding power — not under any provision of this Act — that the National Rice and Corn Corporation (NARIC) “was created as a subsidiary” of the NDC and “started operation in 1936,” per the Supreme Court’s 2024 recital; the Act’s own text never mentions rice, corn, or NARIC. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472) The corporation CA 182 built is documented in this wiki’s National Development Company entry; this entry treats the charter statute itself.

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article for the Act (title verified missing this session)
Wikidata	N/A — entity search returns no item for the Act (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — the data endpoint returns an empty resource for the Act (verified this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — no heading for the Act or for the National Development Company returned by the LC suggest index this session
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Commonwealth Act 182 November 13 1936 National Development Company public corporation fifty million pesos Act 2849 Compania de Fomento Nacional board Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce NARIC subsidiary 1936 investment arm GOCC Philippines
ConceptNet	N/A (ConceptNet API unreachable this session)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

CA 182
The NDC charter of 1936 — the descriptive styling
An Act To Create a Public Corporation To Be Known as the “National Development Company,” To Define its Powers — the long title
The statute that dissolved the Compañía de Fomento Nacional — the succession styling, from the 1919 company’s original name

Examples and Analogies

A corporation rebuilt on its own wreckage: CA 182 did not amend the 1919 company; it dissolved it and vested everything in a new ₱50-million public corporation — the same pattern the Marcos era would repeat in 1979 when Presidential Decree No. 1648 established a revised charter, each generation of the NDC inheriting its predecessor’s estate wholesale. (LawPhil — CA 182, LawPhil — PD 1648)
The state as shareholder: the Act’s sharpest tool is the power to “purchase, hold, alienate, mortgage, pledge, or otherwise dispose of the shares of the capital stock” of other corporations “including the right to vote thereon” — the clause under which NARIC, and later ventures from Philippine Airlines to the National Power Corporation, could be held; the state investing as a portfolio owner rather than merely regulating. (LawPhil — CA 182, NDC — Corporate Profile)
A development bank avant la lettre: bonds, loans, land beyond private limits, cabinet directors — the 1936 design assembled in one public corporation the functions that would later be distributed among the Development Bank of the Philippines, the National Economic Council, and the GOCC sector. (LawPhil — CA 182)
Verified statutory data:
Title and dates: “An Act To Create a Public Corporation To Be Known as the ‘National Development Company,’ To Define its Powers…”; approved November 13, 1936; effective January 1, 1937 (Sec. 7) (LawPhil — CA 182)
Corporation (Sec. 1): public corporation; succession for fifty years from approval; principal office Manila (LawPhil — CA 182)
Capital (Sec. 2): fifty million pesos; five hundred thousand shares of one hundred pesos par, not issued below par or except for cash; at least fifty-one per centum government-subscribed, the remainder open to local governments (LawPhil — CA 182)
Powers (Sec. 3): hold public agricultural and mineral lands in excess of the areas permitted to private corporations, up to twenty-five years renewable for another twenty-five; acquire, hold, mortgage, and alienate property; make contracts and arrangements for developing holdings; contract loans and issue bonds and other obligations; hold and vote shares of other corporations; anti-competition proviso unless the public interest requires (LawPhil — CA 182)
Board (Sec. 4): five directors — the Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce and the Secretary of Finance ex officio, three presidential appointees with Commission on Appointments consent; the President designates and appoints the Chairman; three members a quorum; per diems up to ₱25 for non-government members (LawPhil — CA 182)
Dissolution and succession (Sec. 5): the Act No. 2849 company dissolved; properties, assets, obligations, and contracts vested in the new corporation for shares at net book value; references in other laws read onto the new company (LawPhil — CA 182)
Repeals (Sec. 6): Acts Nos. 2849 and 2873 (LawPhil — CA 182)
The NDC relationship in practice: NDC establishment dated March 10, 1919 via Legislative Act 2849 as “Compania de Fomento Nacional” per the company’s own profile; NARIC created as an NDC subsidiary, starting operation in 1936 with the Proclamation No. 58 (s. 1936) relief designation, per the Supreme Court’s 2024 recital (NDC — Corporate Profile, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)
Fates: NARIC abolished into the Rice and Corn Administration by RA 3452’s Section 13 (June 14, 1962); the CA 182 charter itself superseded by PD 1648’s revised charter (October 25, 1979), which recites that “the National Development Company has been created by Commonwealth Act No. 182” (LawPhil — RA 3452, LawPhil — PD 1648)

Usage Scenarios

1. Citing the NDC’s Statutory Basis

Any claim about what the National Development Company legally was from 1937 to 1979 — its capital, its board, its powers, its anti-competition limit — resolves to this Act, cited by section; the company’s own modern history is documented in this wiki’s National Development Company entry against the same text. (LawPhil — CA 182)

2. Tracing the State’s Corporate Venturing

The shareholding power of Section 3 is the legal root of the NDC’s subsidiary system — most proximately NARIC, the grains subsidiary of 1936, whose own instruments are documented in this wiki’s National Rice and Corn Corporation entry — and of every later equity position the state’s investment arm took. (LawPhil — CA 182, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)

3. Studying Commonwealth Economic Institutions

The Act belongs to the founding statutes of the Commonwealth’s economic state — alongside the corporations and boards of the 1930s — installing a cabinet-chaired public corporation at the center of the state’s industrial planning fifty years before the GOCC governance regime. (LawPhil — CA 182)

4. Fixing the Founding Record

Researchers correcting the NDC’s founding record use the Act’s own text: the dissolved predecessor is the company “created under Act Numbered Twenty-eight hundred and forty-nine,” approved November 13, 1936 — against the variant numbers and dates circulating in official profiles and even in judicial footnotes, examined below. (LawPhil — CA 182)

5. Following the Charter’s Successors

The Act’s story ends forward: PD 1648 (1979) reorganized the company under a revised charter with ten-billion-peso capital, and the modern NDC of this wiki’s entry descends from that rechartering, not directly from the Commonwealth boardroom. (LawPhil — PD 1648)

Strategies

Dissolve forward, never liquidate: Section 5 transferred the old company’s estate whole, at net book value, into the new corporation — continuity of assets, discontinuity of charter, the pattern every later NDC reorganization repeated. (LawPhil — CA 182, LawPhil — PD 1648)
Capitalize from the treasury, control by majority: the fifty-one percent government subscription floor made public control structural rather than regulatory — the ownership answer to the question of who governs a development corporation. (LawPhil — CA 182)
Goverd by cabinet: two ex officio secretaries and a presidentially designated chairman tied the corporation to the economic departments of the Commonwealth — administrative control built into the board. (LawPhil — CA 182)
Invest where the private sector will not: the land, bond, and shareholding powers plus the anti-competition proviso wrote the pioneer-then-exit mandate the company’s own profile claims as its method. (LawPhil — CA 182, NDC — Corporate Profile)
Build subsidiaries rather than departments: NARIC as an NDC subsidiary rather than a bureau — the corporate form chosen for the state’s grains trading, as this wiki’s National Rice and Corn Corporation entry records. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)

Security and Safety Measures

Public control entrenched by charter: the fifty-one percent floor and the vesting of government control in appointed directors and the President’s designation of the Chairman guarded the corporation against private capture by drift. (LawPhil — CA 182)
Par-value discipline: shares issued never below par and never except for cash — a 1936 safeguard against the watered-capital abuses of the era’s corporation law. (LawPhil — CA 182)
The anti-competition proviso: the bar on competing with private enterprise “unless it can be shown that the public interest requires” is the statute’s own check on state overreach into the market. (LawPhil — CA 182)
For researchers: the approval date is November 13, 1936 (the statute’s own “Approved” line), not November 30, 1936 as given in the company’s profile, in the GCG’s, and even in the 2024 Supreme Court decision’s footnote — which also numbers the 1919 founding act “Legislative Act 1248” against the Act No. 2849 recited in CA 182’s own repealing clause; primary text controls. And the Act does not create NARIC: the grains corporation’s founding instrument is the NDC’s own subsidiary action of 1936, documented only through the Supreme Court’s recital. (LawPhil — CA 182, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472, NDC — Corporate Profile)

Historical Context

The Act belongs to the Filipinization and economic-nationalism current of the late American and Commonwealth periods. The company of Act No. 2849 — organized March 10, 1919, as the semi-private Compañía de Fomento Nacional — had spent two decades developing industries private capital would not attempt; the Commonwealth, preparing an independent state, rebuilt it in 1936 as a majority-public ₱50-million corporation with the Secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce and of Finance on its board, under a statute that dissolved the old body and repealed its acts (Nos. 2849 and 2873). (LawPhil — CA 182, NDC — Corporate Profile)

The new corporation’s first generation of subsidiaries answered the crises of the late 1930s: in 1936 the National Rice and Corn Corporation “was created as a subsidiary” under NDC auspices, “started operation in 1936,” and was designated a relief organization importing rice free of duty under Proclamation No. 58 (s. 1936) amid shortage and price manipulation — the origin this wiki’s National Rice and Corn Corporation entry documents. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472) NARIC’s line ran on to independence in 1947, was dissolved into PRISCO in 1950, was revived by RA 663 in 1951, and was finally abolished into the Rice and Corn Administration by Section 13 of RA 3452 on June 14, 1962 — the fate this wiki’s Republic Act No. 3452 entry records. (LawPhil — RA 3452)

The charter itself outlived its subsidiary by seventeen years. On October 25, 1979, PD 1648 reorganized the company and established “a revised charter” with ten-billion-peso capital, reciting that “the National Development Company has been created by Commonwealth Act No. 182 to serve as an agency of the government in the furtherance of its economic policies” — the 1979 text’s own acknowledgment of its 1936 parent. (LawPhil — PD 1648) The company of that lineage operates today as a GOCC attached to the Department of Trade and Industry, still counting its corporate age from the 1919 founding, with CA 182 the statute that made it the state’s own. (NDC — Corporate Profile)

Challenges and Controversies

The NARIC Attribution Error

The Act is routinely misdescribed as the charter of the National Rice and Corn Corporation; its text contains no mention of rice, corn, or NARIC. NARIC was the NDC’s subsidiary, created by the parent company’s own action in 1936 — an instrument the verified record does not name — so citations for NARIC’s origin run through the Supreme Court’s 2024 recital and the 1947–1962 instruments, not through CA 182. (LawPhil — CA 182, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)

The Founding-Date Confusion

The company’s own profile and the GCG’s date the state conversion “November 30, 1936,” and the Supreme Court’s 2024 footnote repeats that date while numbering the 1919 founding act “Legislative Act 1248” — against the statute’s own “Approved, November 13, 1936” and its recital of Act No. 2849. The variants, catalogued in this wiki’s National Development Company entry, are the standing demonstration of why primary text controls. (LawPhil — CA 182, NDC — Corporate Profile, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)

State Competition with Private Enterprise

The anti-competition proviso of Section 3 was the statute’s own recognition of its central tension: a capitalized public corporation with bond powers and unlimited landholdings enters any market it chooses — the debate that followed the NDC through its heavy-industry era and into its post-1986 divestment, as this wiki’s National Development Company entry records. (LawPhil — CA 182)

The Fifty-Year Horizon

CA 182 gave the corporation succession for fifty years — a term that would have expired in 1986 had the company’s corporate life not been extended (the NDC records a fifty-year extension in 1984) and the charter not been replaced in 1979 — the mortality clause every chartered GOCC carries and every generation renegotiates. (LawPhil — CA 182, LawPhil — PD 1648)