"x x x
To answer the contention of LBP that there should be no payment of interest when there is already a prompt payment of just compensation, the High Court discussed that even though the LBP immediately paid the remaining balance on the just compensation due to the petitioners after this Court had fixed the value of the expropriated properties, it overlooks one essential fact – from the time that the State took the petitioners’ properties until the time that the petitioners were fully paid, almost 12 long years passed. This is the rationale for imposing the 12% interest – in order to compensate the petitioners for the income they would have made had they been properly compensated for their properties at the time of the taking.
This Court is not oblivious of the purpose of our agrarian laws particularly P.D. No. 27,[22] that is, to emancipate the tiller of the soil from his bondage; to be lord and owner of the land he tills.
Further, the deliberations of the 1986 Constitutional Commission on this subject reveal that just compensation should not do violence to the Bill of Rights, but should also not make an insurmountable obstacle to a successful agrarian reform program. Hence, the landowner's right to just compensation should be balanced with agrarian reform.[23]
The mandate of determination of just compensation is a judicial function,[24]hence, we exert all efforts to consider and interpret all the applicable laws and issuances in order to balance the right of the farmers to own a land subject to the award the proper and just compensation due to the landowners.
x x x."
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