An Act Appropriating Funds for the Operation of the Bangsamoro Government from January One to December Thirty-One, Two Thousand and Twenty-One and for Other Purposes

This is the region's budget for 2021 — ₱75,628,681,748.26, drawn from the annual block grant, the region's share of national taxes, fees and charges collected inside its territory, and projected collections on its own regional taxes and fees.

It is the first Bangsamoro budget that says what it adds up to. The FY 2020 act appropriated “the following sums, or so much thereof as may be necessary… out of any available funds” without a total and without naming a single revenue source. This one opens with a figure to the centavo and a list of where the money comes from, and every budget since has followed that form.

The money is organized by agency across 17 ministries, 6 other executive offices and 3 special purpose funds. Five of those six offices — the Planning and Development Authority, the Attorney-General's Office, the Human Rights Commission, the Women Commission and the Youth Commission — exist because acts passed since the last budget created them, and this is where they first get funded. The Bangsamoro Transition Authority receives ₱3,707,969,000, about 4.9% of the total.

The pandemic is in the numbers. The Ministry of Health carries a COVID Response line of ₱379,968,484, and the ₱5.44 billion Contingent Fund may be spent on “supplies and materials needed in response to the effect of the COVID19 pandemic including vaccines, health protective gears, and other paraphernalia not otherwise considered in budget allocation”.

The last 16 pages carry 70 sections of general provisions. Personnel Services across government may not exceed 45% of total revenue. At least 5% of every ministry's budget must go to a Gender and Development Plan. Deductions may never reduce an employee's monthly net take-home pay below ₱5,000. Rainwater collection systems are required in public markets, school sites and government buildings. Infrastructure contracts, winning bidders and final costs must be published within 30 days, and officials who miss their quarterly reports have their salaries suspended automatically until they comply.

The Bangsamoro Government needs an annual appropriations act to function. This one was written in the first pandemic year, and its Introduction says so plainly: the government “has charged through turbulent times”, took “cognizance of the changes brought about by the ‘New Normal’”, and expects to keep operating “in an increasingly volatile, complex and uncertain environment”. It was passed and approved on the same day, 23 December 2020, a week before it took effect.

The interesting change here is not the amount but the form. The FY 2020 act appropriated “the following sums, or so much thereof as may be necessary… out of any available funds in the Bangsamoro Treasury Office… not otherwise appropriated” — no total, no revenue sources. A year later Section 1 names ₱75,628,681,748.26 and lists three sources: the block grant, the region's share of national taxes collected in its territory, and projected collections on its own taxes and fees. A government that could not state its revenue base in 2019 could state it in 2020, and the appropriations law changed shape accordingly. Every budget since has kept that shape, and each has added a source to the list — “other subsidies” in FY 2022, “unused/unutilized appropriations from the Bangsamoro Treasury” the same year, “unutilized prior years' allotments reverted to the Bangsamoro Treasury” by FY 2024.

This is also the first budget written after the Bangsamoro Administrative Code, and it shows. Where the FY 2020 act set out its own rule for remitting agency income, this one simply points at Section 3, Chapter I, Book VII of BAA 13. The FY 2020 act had asked for that code in its own Section 70; here the code is doing the work.

The pandemic appears in the line items rather than the general provisions — a ₱379,968,484 COVID Response appropriation in the Ministry of Health and a Contingent Fund authorisation for vaccines and protective gear — but not one of the 70 general provisions mentions COVID-19. The rules for spending did not change; only what was bought did.

The ₱5.44 billion Contingent Fund is also the first sign of a long retreat from lump-sum budgeting. A year earlier it had been ₱13.2 billion — 20% of the whole budget — and the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefit Fund alongside it another ₱9.28 billion. Here they are ₱5.44 billion and ₱1.78 billion, 9.6% of the budget between them against 34% the year before. The Contingent Fund keeps falling every year after this, reaching ₱666.8 million by FY 2025.

It carries the same quiet line the FY 2020 fund carried: “provision for cost of acquisition of Al-Amanah Islamic Bank and other related costs”. It appears again in FY 2022, FY 2023, FY 2024, FY 2025 and FY 2026 — 7 consecutive budgets making room for the same purchase.

Section 47 gave the money one year. BAA 24, passed a year later, extended it to 31 December 2022; BAA 38, passed in June 2023, was still authorising the release of unpaid obligations from this budget. Money appropriated for 2021 was still being disbursed in 2023.