Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 24
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Extending the Availability of the General Appropriations Act of the Bangsamoro Until December 31, 2022, Except Personnel Services and Other Items of the MOOE, Amending for the Purpose Section 47 of the General Provisions of the General Appropriations Act of the Bangsamoro for Years 2020 and 2021
Appropriations from 2020 and 2021 stayed obligable until 31 December 2022. Infrastructure and capital outlays from both years could be delivered, inspected and paid up to 30 June 2023. Personnel Services from each year still expired on schedule.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This extends two budgets at once. Money appropriated in the 2020 Bangsamoro budget and money appropriated in the 2021 budget both stayed usable until 31 December 2022, for the purposes they were granted for and under the same conditions.
Infrastructure gets a longer tail. Capital outlays from either year could be obligated to the end of 2022 and then delivered, inspected and paid up to 30 June 2023 — recognizing that a road contracted in December is not finished in December.
Personnel Services is excluded from both, exactly as in the earlier extension: 2020 salary money died at the end of 2020, 2021 salary money at the end of 2021.
Why it was proposed
Two budget years were about to lapse with work still unfinished, in a government whose delivery machinery was still being assembled. The act was passed on 28 December 2021, 3 days before the 2021 money expired.
Who it affects
- Communities with projects funded in either year, which did not have to be cancelled and re-appropriated.
- Contractors delivering infrastructure, who gained 6 months beyond the obligation deadline to complete and be paid.
- Ministries and offices holding unspent operating and capital funds.
- Government employees, for whom nothing changed.
Who would implement it
- Ministry of Finance, and Budget and Management (MFBM), authorised to issue implementing guidelines under both amended sections
Funding
No appropriation. No new appropriation and no amount stated. The act extends the availability of money already granted by BAA 3 for FY2020 and BAA 15 for FY2021.
What changes if it becomes law
- Two budget years stayed obligable through 2022 instead of lapsing.
- Infrastructure gained a payment window to 30 June 2023.
- Salary appropriations expired on their original dates in both years.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The significant fact is that this is the 2020 budget's second extension. BAA 14, passed in December 2020, had already carried it to the end of 2021; this act carries it again to the end of 2022, and lets infrastructure payments run to mid-2023. Money appropriated for the region's first full budget year was still being spent nearly 3 years later.
That is not necessarily waste — a new government building roads and health centers from a standing start will miss annual deadlines, and repeated extension is more honest than a fictional lapse followed by fresh appropriation. But it does mean the annual budget was not, in practice, an annual limit, and a reader trying to work out what the region actually spent in a given year cannot do it from that year's appropriations act alone.
The constant across every act in the series is the treatment of salaries. Personnel Services is never extended. Unfilled posts are the easiest surplus in any government budget, and refusing to let that money roll forward is the one piece of budget discipline these extension acts consistently keep.