TO:	The Philippine Coconut Authority

An assessment of the national coconut replacement program brings the Visayan provinces into focus as a place of high priority, especially on account of the economic effects of the sugar price decline and the consequent shift I have ordered from sugar to other crops in marginal lands.

In view of the foregoing, you are hereby directed to establish without delay a coconut seedling bank in a suitable Visayan province, preferably Negros Oriental, which shall serve the entire Visayan region as the source of the new crossbreed varieties which we are propagating under the coconut replacement program being financed by the United Coconut Planters Bank and Philippine Coconut Planters Federation.

In this connection, farmers brought into the program shall each be subsidized annually with an adequate amount, as you will determine subject to my approval, so as to compensate them for their loss of income during the period of replanting.

Done in the City of Manila, this 1st day of March, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and seventy-eight,