Coconut Investment Company

Also known as: CIC · The Coconut Investment Company under RA 6260 · The COCOFUND company — after the receipts its levy issued · Administrator of the Coconut Investment Fund (CIF)

The Benguet-pine forestry ruling, the Proc-50 trust, the levy corporation, and the food ministry

Definition

The Coconut Investment Company (CIC) was the government corporation created by Republic Act No. 6260 (June 19, 1971), “AN ACT INSTITUTING A COCONUT INVESTMENT FUND AND CREATING A COCONUT INVESTMENT COMPANY FOR THE ADMINISTRATION THEREOF,” to administer the Coconut Investment Fund (CIF) built from a levy of ₱0.55 on the first domestic sale of every 100 kilograms of copra. (RA 6260 — LawPhil) The statute capitalized the company at ₱100 million in ten million shares of ₱10 par, “subscribed by the Government of the Republic of the Philippines for and on behalf of the coconut farmers,” and gave every copra seller a receipt “which shall be converted into shares of stock of the Company upon its incorporation as a private entity” — the receipt-into-shares mechanism whose ownership fiction the Supreme Court dismantled in COCOFED v. Republic (January 24, 2012), holding the exactions were taxes imposed for a public purpose, not the farmers’ subscriptions. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

The company’s institutional life was short and tangled: PD 461 (May 17, 1974) attached it to the new Department of Agriculture; from 1975 its COCOFUND receipts were exchanged, under PCA Administrative Order No. 1, for stock certificates of the United Coconut Planters Bank — a conflation the Supreme Court rejected in holding the CIC “is a different corporate entity from” UCPB; Executive Order No. 817 (July 8, 1982) abolished the company among certain “inactive government corporations”; and Executive Order No. 825 (August 28, 1982) ordered its reorganization as a private corporation, its undistributed shares voted by COCOFED pending distribution. (PD 461 — LawPhil, EO 817 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article; creation carried within Coco Levy Fund scam (verified this session) (Wikipedia — Coco Levy Fund scam)
Wikidata	N/A — no item (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — endpoint unreachable this session (ETIMEDOUT)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	copra — “The dried kernel of the coconut, from which coconut oil is extruded” (the commodity whose first sale the levy attached to) (Wiktionary — copra)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — id.loc.gov unreachable this session (403)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Coconut Investment Company RA 6260 Coconut Investment Fund COCOFUND receipts copra levy EO 817 EO 825 COCOFED v. Republic UCPB Philippines
ConceptNet	N/A — ConceptNet API unreachable this session (HTTP 502)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

CIC
The Coconut Investment Company under RA 6260
The COCOFUND company — after the receipts its levy issued
Administrator of the Coconut Investment Fund (CIF)

Examples and Analogies

A subscription the farmers never signed: RA 6260 styled the levy as capital — the government subscribed “for and on behalf of the coconut farmers,” and receipts were to become shares — yet the money was exacted at the point of sale of the farmers’ own copra, the fiction of ownership the Court dismantled in holding the exactions were taxes. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)
Two funds, two receipts, one bank: the Court insisted on the distinction the 1970s blurred — CIF receipts under RA 6260 were exchangeable for CIC shares, while the ₱15 CCSF levy of PD 276 was a different exaction — yet PCA Administrative Order No. 1 (1975) paid UCPB stock certificates to registered COCOFUND holders, only ₱16 million worth of receipts being registered by June 1976, “leaving over 50 million shares undistributed.” (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)
Abolished as ‘inactive,’ reorganized as private: EO 817 abolished the CIC among “certain inactive government corporations” while its fund at the Development Bank of the Philippines exceeded ₱150 million; seven weeks later EO 825 ordered its reincorporation as a private company whose initial paid-up stock equaled the COCOFUND collections — about ₱100 million by December 17, 1981. (EO 817 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil)
Verified statutory data (the institutional register):
Creation: RA 6260, June 19, 1971 — ₱0.55 levy per 100 kg copra; ₱0.50 to the CIF, ₱0.03 for collection machinery, ₱0.02 to the producers’ association; collection capped at ten years (RA 6260 — LawPhil)
Capital and powers: ₱100 million in ten million ₱10 shares subscribed by the Government “for and on behalf of the coconut farmers”; powers of lending, equity investment, subsidiary organization, and tax-exempt bond issuance up to ₱100 million — but no banking powers, deposits to sit with the DBP or another government bank (RA 6260 — LawPhil)
Attachment: PD 461 (May 17, 1974) listed the company among the GOCCs attached to the Department of Agriculture (PD 461 — LawPhil)
Abolition and reincarnation: EO 817 (July 8, 1982) — PCA took the research, promotion, scholarship, and manpower functions; DBP the lending and investment functions; the fund over ₱150 million split 30/70 between them as trust funds; EO 825 (August 28, 1982) — private incorporation under Batas Pambansa Blg. 68, shares to registered COCOFUND holders, COCOFED to vote pending shares (EO 817 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil)
Adjudication: January 24, 2012 — CIF payments “are not valid and legal bases for ownership claims over UCPB shares” or the CIIF companies (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

Usage Scenarios

1. Legal Research on the Levy-as-Tax Doctrine

The CIC anchors the 2012 ruling’s historical section: RA 6260 “created the Coconut Investment Company (CIC) to administer the Coconut Investment Fund (CIF),” and the receipts it issued became the claimants’ supposed title — claims the Court rejected because the exactions were imposed by law for a public purpose and were therefore public funds. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

2. Tracing the COCOFUND Receipts

Researchers of the levy follow the paper: PHILCOA issued the receipts as collection agent; PCA Administrative Order No. 1 opened registration in 1975, the windows closing by June 1976 — by which time only ₱16 million worth had been registered and over 50 million bank shares were left undistributed. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

3. Studying Corporate Wind-Down Practice

EO 817 and EO 825 are a matched pair of dissolution instruments: the first abolished the government company and parceled its functions and fund between the PCA and the DBP; the second transferred all powers, assets, and liabilities — except the power to levy — to a private successor. (EO 817 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil)

4. Recovering State-Captured Wealth

The original complaint in Sandiganbayan Civil Case No. 0033 revolved around the PCGG’s provisional takeover “of COCOFED, Cocomark, and Coconut Investment Company and their assets” — the CIC entered the ill-gotten-wealth litigation at its founding moment. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

Strategies

Read the instruments in sequence: RA 6260 (1971) created the fund and the company; PD 461 (1974) attached it; PCA AO 1 (1975) diverted its receipts to bank shares; EO 817 and EO 825 (1982) abolished and reincarnated it — the sequence, not any single instrument, is the history. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, PD 461 — LawPhil, EO 817 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil)
Keep the CIC apart from the UCPB-CIIF lineage: the Court’s own discipline — the investment company “is a different corporate entity from the United Coconut Planters Bank” — prevents the conflation behind decades of ownership claims. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)
Cite the adjudicated figures: the ₱100 million capital and collections, the ₱16 million of registered receipts, and the 50 million undistributed shares are court-record numbers; totals beyond them are estimates. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)
Attribute ownership language carefully: RA 6260’s “for and on behalf of the coconut farmers” is the statute’s phrase; the 2012 ruling — government ownership in trust for all coconut farmers — is the law’s last word, as this wiki’s Coconut levy entries carry it. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

Security and Safety Measures

Receipts as the audit trail: RA 6260 required COCOFUND receipts for every levy payment — a paper register that became the evidentiary spine of the ownership litigation, imperfect because many farmers never received or registered theirs. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)
Special-fund discipline: PD 1234 (1977) expressly listed the Coconut Investments Fund among funds to be “remitted to the Treasury and treated as Special Accounts in the General Fund” — the custody rule the 2012 Court quoted against the privatizing decrees. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)
Audit jurisdiction restored: by holding the exactions were public funds, the 2012 ruling returned the levy-derived assets to Commission on Audit jurisdiction and congressional appropriation. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)
Trust-fund ring-fencing at abolition: EO 817’s 30/70 split of the fund between the PCA and the DBP kept the corpus in trust departments rather than general coffers — an early, if contested, safeguard. (EO 817 — LawPhil)

Historical Context

RA 6260 was signed on June 19, 1971, sixteen months before martial law — an initiative to “accelerate the development of the coconut industry through the provision of adequate medium and long-term financing,” administered by a company whose stock the government subscribed “for and on behalf of the coconut farmers.” (RA 6260 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012) Martial law transformed the setting: PD 461 attached the CIC to the Department of Agriculture in 1974, and the levy regime multiplied — the CCSF of PD 276 (1973), the CIDF of PD 582 (1974), the bank acquisition under PD 755 (1975) — until the CIC’s receipts were exchanged for UCPB stock, 50 million-plus shares left undistributed. (PD 461 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

The 1982 orders closed the government company: EO 817 abolished it and divided its fund; EO 825 reincorporated it privately, its initial stock equal to the COCOFUND collections and its undistributed shares voted by COCOFED. (EO 817 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil) After February 1986 the PCGG took over the CIC with COCOFED and Cocomark, and the litigation that became Civil Case No. 0033 ran to the January 24, 2012 decision: the exactions were taxes, the receipt-based claims failed, and the recovered levy estate passed into the trust-fund regime this wiki’s Coconut levy entries record. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

Challenges and Controversies

Public Funds or the Farmers’ Equity

The CIC embodied the central question of the coconut-levy saga: RA 6260’s receipts promised shares, but the 2012 ruling held the payments were taxes exacted for a public purpose — “not valid and legal bases for ownership claims” — converting the promised equity into a public trust. (RA 6260 — LawPhil, COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

The Undistributed Shares

The exchange of COCOFUND receipts for UCPB stock left over 50 million shares undistributed after the 1976 registration cut-off; PCA Resolution No. 074-78 then allocated them to existing shareholders and COCOFED-identified farmers — the “bonanza” reallocation the courts found invalid for want of standards. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)

An ‘Inactive’ Corporation Holding Millions

EO 817 abolished the CIC among “certain inactive government corporations” at the very moment its fund exceeded ₱150 million and its collections had reached ₱100 million — a tension between label and ledger that historians of the levy period cite against the wind-down’s honesty. (EO 817 — LawPhil, EO 825 — LawPhil)

The Company Confused with the Bank

Because CIF receipts were swapped for UCPB certificates in 1975, claimants long treated the CIC and UCPB as one; the Supreme Court’s correction — “a different corporate entity” — is the standing lesson in keeping the exaction, its collecting company, and its destinations distinct. (COCOFED v. Republic, Jan. 24, 2012)