Executive Order No. 228

Also known as: EO 228 · Executive Order No. 228, s. 1987 · The full-land-ownership decree — the styling drawn from its long title

Government

Definition

Executive Order No. 228 (July 17, 1987), long-titled “Declaring Full Land Ownership to Qualified Farmer Beneficiaries Covered by Presidential Decree No. 27; Determining the Value of Remaining Unvalued Rice and Corn Lands Subject to P.D. No. 27; and Providing for the Manner of Payment by the Farmer Beneficiary and Mode of Compensation to the Landowner,” is President Corazon C. Aquino’s decree completing the land transfer program Presidential Decree No. 27 had begun in 1972. Issued “by virtue of the powers vested in me by the Constitution” — the decree power the Freedom Constitution preserved — its operative stroke is Section 1: “All qualified farmer beneficiaries are now deemed full owners as of October 21, 1972 of the land they acquired by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 27.” (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil) The order sits mid-chain in this wiki’s agrarian cluster: PD 27 decreed the emancipation in 1972, PD 266 supplied the instruments, this EO declared ownership complete, and Republic Act No. 6657 the next year opened the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program with PD 27 lands first in Phase One. (Presidential Decree No. 27 — LawPhil, Republic Act No. 6657 — LawPhil)

The order’s economics are Sections 2 and 6. Section 2 fixes valuation for the remaining unvalued rice and corn lands: average gross production per hectare as determined by the Barangay Committee on Land Production, “multiplied by two and a half (2.5), the product of which shall be multiplied by Thirty Five Pesos (P35.00), the government support price for one cavan of 50 kilos of palay on October 21, 1972, or Thirty One Pesos (P31.00)… for one cavan of 50 kilos of corn on October 21, 1972” — with lease rentals paid after October 21, 1972 “considered as advance payment for the land.” (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil) Section 6 recasts payment: the total cost at six percent interest — a two-percent rebate for on-time amortizations — payable to the Land Bank “over a period up to twenty (20) years in twenty (20) equal annual amortizations,” early payment allowed; and the corpus-verified transferability rule in its closing sentence: “Ownership of lands acquired by the farmer-beneficiary may be transferred after full payment of amortizations.” Around these the order builds the landowner’s compensation menu (Sec. 3), the trust holding contested proceeds (Sec. 5), the mortgage lien and foreclosure machinery (Secs. 7–12), and the Agrarian Fund that kept the Land Bank running (Sec. 15). (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (verified this session); the order is not named in Wikipedia’s Land reform in the Philippines either (verified this session)
Wikidata	N/A — entity search returns no item for the order (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — no underlying Wikipedia article, hence no resource
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	emancipation — noun, the program the order completes, PD 27’s “Decreeing the Emancipation of Tenants from the Bondage of the Soil” (headword verified this session)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	Land reform–Philippines (sh2008106569) (verified this session via id.loc.gov suggest)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	agrarian reform (c_196) — verified this session via the AGROVOC LOD (English prefLabel confirmed at aims.fao.org)
Google Scholar	Executive Order No. 228 July 17 1987 Aquino full land ownership PD 27 rice corn valuation P35 palay P31 corn 2.5 average gross production amortization twenty years Land Bank bonds emancipation patent certificate of land transfer RA 6657 Phase One suppletory
ConceptNet	N/A — ConceptNet API unreachable this session (HTTP 502)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

EO 228
Executive Order No. 228, s. 1987
The full-land-ownership decree — the styling drawn from its long title

Examples and Analogies

A decree that closed a fifteen-year gap: PD 27 made the tenant a “deemed owner” in 1972; this EO declared the qualified beneficiaries full owners “as of October 21, 1972” — the declaration backdated to emancipation day, ownership complete in law while the payment schedule ran on. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil, Presidential Decree No. 27 — LawPhil)
A formula priced to 1972: average gross production × 2.5 × the 1972 support prices (₱35 per cavan of palay, ₱31 of corn) froze the land’s price at the emancipation-day level — cheap for the beneficiary, 1972-priced for the landowner, with lease rentals already paid credited against the cost. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
One sentence that changed the deed rules: PD 27 barred transfer “except by hereditary succession or to the Government”; the order replaced the absolute bar with transfer “after full payment of amortizations” — title held in escrow against the beneficiary’s own default. (Presidential Decree No. 27 — LawPhil, Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Verified statutory data:
Approval: July 17, 1987, Manila, President Corazon C. Aquino; effectivity upon signing and publication (Sec. 18) (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Sec. 3 compensation: at the landowner’s option — ten percent cash with the balance in Land Bank bonds over ten years at market rates aligned with 90-day treasury bills; direct cash or in-kind payment by beneficiaries subject to DAR approval; other modes approved by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Secs. 7–11 enforcement: mortgage lien on all Land Bank-financed PD 27 lands; three unpaid annual amortizations sufficient cause for foreclosure; foreclosure by registration after thirty days’ final notice; two-year redemption; resale within three months to DAR-certified landless farmers of the locality, by lottery if more than one buyer (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Sec. 13: PD 27 and EO 228 registrations free of documentary stamps and registration fees (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)

Usage Scenarios

1. Completing Operation Land Transfer

The order answered the program’s chronic bottleneck — the valuation phase of Operation Land Transfer, where the process “bogged down continually” against a scope of about 1.42 million tenanted rice-and-corn hectares — by fixing the formula administratively and declaring ownership complete, the completion strategy this wiki’s Certificate of Land Transfer and Emancipation Patent entries document. (Martial Law Museum — Marcos agrarian reform, Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)

2. Compensating the Landowners

Landowners worked Section 3’s menu — bonds, direct payment, or PARC-approved modes — with Section 5 directing that refused or disputed compensation be held by the Land Bank’s Trust Department, invested only in fully guaranteed government securities, and Section 4 deeming outstanding Land Bank bonds matured to one-twenty-fifth of face value per year. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)

3. Foreclosing on Defaulting Beneficiaries

The order’s enforcement edge is Sections 7 through 12 — lien, foreclosure on three unpaid amortizations after final notice, redemption, resale — the machinery that answered the repayment default among Emancipation Patent holders the Martial Law Museum’s assessment reckons at ninety percent. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil, Martial Law Museum — Marcos agrarian reform)

4. Transitioning the Awards into CARP

Republic Act No. 6657 (June 10, 1988) put “[r]ice and corn lands under Presidential Decree No. 27” at the head of Phase One, disqualified PD 27 beneficiaries “who have culpably sold, disposed of, or abandoned their land,” and in Section 75 gave the old law continued force: “The provisions of Republic Act No. 3844 as amended, Presidential Decree Nos. 27 and 266 as amended, Executive Order Nos. 228 and 229, both Series of 1987; and other laws not inconsistent with this Act shall have suppletory effect.” (Republic Act No. 6657 — LawPhil)

Strategies

Declare first, pay later: Section 1’s backdated declaration separated the farmer’s title from the payment schedule — ownership complete in 1987, amortizations running up to twenty years — the design that closed the backlog without waiting for the ledger. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Freeze the price at emancipation day: the ₱35/₱31 cavan support prices kept the beneficiaries’ cost at the decree-era level — and the landowners’ compensation at the same level, the order’s central distributive decision. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Keep the Land Bank solvent while it pays: the WHEREAS clauses record the twin needs — complete the transfer, accelerate payment, and “maintain the financial validity of the Land Bank of the Philippines” — executed through Section 4’s bond maturities, the Sinking Fund, and Section 15’s Agrarian Fund. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Lock the title against default: the transferability sentence of Section 6 and the lien-foreclosure-redemption arc of Sections 7 to 12 tie the loosened transfer rule to a mortgage — speculation prevented not by an absolute bar but by security. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)

Security and Safety Measures

Due process inside a summary foreclosure: before foreclosure the Land Bank must serve final notice on the defaulting tenant-farmer and furnish DAR a copy; where service fails, posting at the town hall, public market, and barangay hall substitutes. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
Redemption as the beneficiary’s safety net: the two-year window of Section 10 — all unpaid amortizations plus six-percent interest — stands between default and loss of the land. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
The landowner’s proceeds held in trust: refused or disputed compensation is held in trust, invested “only in government securities fully guaranteed by the Republic of the Philippines,” earnings accruing to the landowner and his heirs. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil)
For researchers: the order has eighteen sections; the transferability rule is Section 6’s closing sentence and the valuation formula Section 2 — and PD 27’s original rule (“not… transferable except by hereditary succession or to the Government”) is the rule the order modified, not the order’s own text. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil, Presidential Decree No. 27 — LawPhil)

Historical Context

PD 27 of October 21, 1972, signed five weeks into martial law, decreed “the emancipation of all tenant farmers” on rice and corn lands and made each “deemed owner of a portion constituting a family-size farm of five (5) hectares if not irrigated and three (3) hectares if irrigated,” title conditional on cooperative membership and barred transfer except by hereditary succession or to the Government; PD 266 of August 4, 1973 supplied the Land Transfer Certificate, the Emancipation Patent, and free registration. (Presidential Decree No. 27 — LawPhil, Presidential Decree No. 266 — LawPhil) Fifteen years later the machinery had not finished: valuation was the chronic bottleneck, and EP holders’ repayment default was reckoned at ninety percent. (Martial Law Museum — Marcos agrarian reform)

The post-Marcos calendar pressed the program: on January 22, 1987 — less than a month before the Constitution’s ratification — agrarian workers marching on Mendiola Street were fired on, and land reform became the new government’s first obligation. (Land reform in the Philippines) EO 228 followed on July 17, 1987 — ownership declared complete as of the 1972 decree date, valuation fixed, payment stretched to twenty years at six percent, landowners compensated in bonds, the Land Bank protected by the Agrarian Fund — and RA 6657 followed on June 10, 1988, placing PD 27 lands first in CARP’s Phase One and giving the decree suppletory effect by name. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil, Republic Act No. 6657 — LawPhil)

Challenges and Controversies

Compensation Priced at 1972

The formula’s freeze delivered the land cheap to beneficiaries and compensated landowners at fifteen-year-old prices — against a record, carried in this wiki’s cluster, in which many PD 27 landowners were never paid at all during the martial-law years; the order regulated how the 1972 price was paid, not whether it was adequate. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil, Land reform in the Philippines)

Ownership Complete, Foreclosure Armed

The same instrument that declared full ownership built the foreclosure pipeline against its beneficiaries — three unpaid amortizations and the mortgage could take the land back — the standing tension between Section 1’s generosity and Sections 7 to 12’s enforcement in a program already defaulting at ninety percent. (Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil, Martial Law Museum — Marcos agrarian reform)

The Transfer Rule’s Two Regimes

PD 27’s absolute bar, this order’s after-full-payment rule, and RA 6657’s disqualification of beneficiaries who culpably sold or abandoned their lands are three regimes over one question — when an emancipated parcel may change hands — and conveyancing disputes over EP-era titles turn on which instrument governs the transaction’s date. (Presidential Decree No. 27 — LawPhil, Executive Order No. 228 — LawPhil, Republic Act No. 6657 — LawPhil)

A Completion Without a Count

No cumulative, verifiable count of the completed transfers the order produced has been located — the same gap this wiki’s Certificate of Land Transfer entry registers; assessments rest on the program-level record, not an issuance ledger. (Martial Law Museum — Marcos agrarian reform)