Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 38
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Authorizing the Continued Use of Funds for the Release and Disbursement of Unpaid Obligations of FY 2020, 2021, and 2022 Appropriations
For each of the 3 years, infrastructure, capital outlays and operating programmes obligated by the stated cut-off remain effective until fully released and disbursed. Personnel Services still expires on its original date each year.
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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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 is about unpaid bills. Across three budget years the region had obligated money — committed it to contracts, to buildings, to goods delivered — and had not yet paid it out before the appropriations were due to die.
The act deals with each year in turn. For 2020 and 2021, infrastructure, capital outlays and continuing operating programs could be obligated up to 31 December 2022; for 2022, up to 31 December 2023. And then, in each case, the same sentence: the appropriation shall continue to be effective until fully released and disbursed.
Personnel Services is excluded from all three, as in every act in this series — 2020 salary money died at the end of 2020, 2021's at the end of 2021, 2022's at the end of 2022. And the constituent LGUs' share of income taxes collected in the region is protected, available until fully expended or disbursed.
Why it was proposed
To avoid leaving contractors and suppliers unpaid for work already done and accepted. An appropriation that lapses does not cancel the debt; it removes the legal authority to settle it, which is a worse outcome than an extension.
Who it affects
- Contractors and suppliers owed for completed work under any of the three budgets.
- Communities whose projects were funded and built but not yet paid for.
- Constituent local government units, whose tax shares are protected.
- Ministries and offices carrying unpaid obligations.
Who would implement it
- Ministry of Finance, and Budget and Management, authorised to issue implementing guidelines for each amended provision
Funding
No appropriation. No new appropriation and no amount stated. It keeps effective money already granted by BAA 3, BAA 15 and BAA 23.
What changes if it becomes law
- Obligated amounts from 2020, 2021 and 2022 remain payable with no closing date.
- New commitments were still bounded by the stated obligation cut-offs.
- LGU income tax shares stay available until fully expended.
- Salaries continue to expire on their original dates.
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
This is the act that starts the shift, and it is worth being precise about the sequence. Read on its own it is unobjectionable — paying for work already delivered is the least controversial thing a budget law can do, and the alternative is stiffing contractors on a technicality. But the mechanism chosen was not another dated extension. It was the phrase 'shall continue to be effective until fully released and disbursed', applied to three budget years at once, in June 2023.
Six months later BAA 51 used comparable wording — 'until fully expended' — for the Special Development Fund, and BAA 52 carried it into the 2023 general appropriations. So the removal of disbursement deadlines was not a single decision about one pot of money; it began here, with unpaid obligations, and became the standing approach within half a year.
The distinction that keeps it defensible is one this act observes and the later ones partly relax: the open-ended wording applies to *disbursement of already-obligated amounts*, while the power to make new commitments still ends on a stated date. That is a meaningful line. An appropriation that can still pay old debts is not the same as one that can still be spent on new things. Anyone reading the region's budget legislation should check, in each act, which side of that line the open-ended clause sits on.