ACTING Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida issued Department of Justice (DOJ) Opinion 16, Series of 2026, dated March 9, 2026, where he “opines that the retention limits provided for by Republic Act (RA) 6657, as amended, is no longer relevant and required, thereby dispensing with the need to secure a land transfer clearance under Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Administrative Order (AO) 04, s. 2021.” This has caused confusion both to the Land Registration Authority (LRA) registrars and the registering public. Land transactions that have sat dormant for years, pending compliance with agrarian clearance requirements, are now being pushed for registration on the strength of a single DOJ opinion — one that, on closer reading, rests on a mistaken premise about how the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) actually wound down.
The end of CARP
RA 6657, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988, as amended by RA 9700, sets the retention limits for landholdings to 5 hectares, with an additional 3 hectares for each qualified child. The CARP effectively ended on June 30, 2014. In 2021, DAR AO 04, Series of 2021, or the Revised Rules and Procedures Governing the Issuance of DAR Clearance on Land Transactions Involving Agricultural Lands, which requires the submission of a land transfer clearance (LTC) from DAR before the valid transfer and registration of land transactions involving private agricultural lands with no notice of coverage (NOC) issued under RA 6657, as amended, or those not covered by any agrarian reform program.
It is worth stressing what AO 04 was designed to solve. It does not apply across the board to every agricultural parcel in the country — it applies specifically to lands that were never issued a NOC, precisely because those are the parcels where a registering party might otherwise slip through without anyone checking whether the 5-hectare retention ceiling, or the 3-hectare allowance per qualified child, had already been exceeded through a series of transfers. The LTC, in other words, is not a relic of an expired program; it is DAR’s mechanism for policing compliance with retention limits on land covered by CARP.
LTC still needed
This is where acting Secretary Vida’s opinion becomes questionable. His theory appears to be that because CARP’s implementation period lapsed on June 30, 2014, the retention limits under RA 6657 “no longer relevant and required” — and that, as a consequence, the LTC requirement under AO 04 has lost its legal footing. But the sunset of CARP’s coverage period did not repeal Section 6 of RA 6657, nor did it extinguish the government’s continuing authority to enforce retention ceilings on lands that predate or fall outside any notice of coverage. Vida seemingly is wrong that the LTC is no longer required. Note that if an NOC was issued prior to June 2014, then that land is still under CARP and cannot be titled. If no NOC was issued, then the land is no longer under CARP. How would the local registrars know which of these lands have been issued NOCs or not? Thus, there is still a need for the LTC.
Take note that Section 30 of RA 9700 provides, “Any case and/or proceeding involving the implementation of the provisions of Republic Act 6657, as amended, which may remain pending on June 30, 2014, shall be allowed to proceed to its finality and be executed even beyond such date.” This provision was Congress’ own acknowledgment that the June 30, 2014, deadline was not a hard wall beyond which the entire agrarian reform apparatus simply switched off. Pending cases, proceedings and unresolved coverage determinations survive that date and must still be brought to finality. A DOJ opinion cannot, by its own force, override an express statutory provision preserving DAR’s authority over such matters.
DOJ’s opinion is only persuasive
There is also a broader point about the legal weight an opinion like this should carry. DOJ opinions are advisory in character; Philippine jurisprudence has long recognized that even a ruling of the justice secretary is persuasive but not binding, let alone conclusive against a co-equal agency’s own implementing rules. AO 04 was issued by DAR pursuant to its rule-making authority under RA 6657 itself, and it stands unless and until DAR itself amends it, or a court of competent jurisdiction strikes it down. A DOJ opinion addressed to a question of statutory construction does not, by itself, repeal an existing administrative issuance.
Registering a transfer without the required clearance, where one is in fact still due, exposes the parties to possible legal problems — registration of agricultural land transactions in violation of RA 6657’s restrictions can be declared null and void, and those responsible risk administrative and even criminal liability under the law’s penal provisions. Registrars who rely on DOJ Opinion 16 to waive the LTC requirement wholesale, without verifying NOC status on a per-parcel basis, may be exposing the resulting titles — and themselves — to exactly that risk.
Until DAR itself revisits AO 04, or the courts weigh in, LRA registrars would do well to treat Secretary Vida’s opinion with caution rather than as a blanket license to dispense with the land transfer clearance.
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