An Act Appropriating Supplemental Funds for the Operation of the Bangsamoro Government and for Other Purposes

This is the middle supplemental of 3, distributing ₱11.3 billion across 23 agencies and 2 special purpose funds. Its funding source differs slightly from the others: not only unutilized prior years' appropriations but also “the income generated from the investments made to the Bureau of Treasury” — the return on parking idle regional money with the national treasury.

The largest single item is not a ministry. It is the Contingent Fund, at ₱4.02 billion — 35.6% of the entire act — held unallocated and released case by case on the Chief Minister's approval. Its permitted uses are broad: digitalising the bureaucracy, a Transitional Development Impact Fund, Islamic finance programs, customs duties on foreign aid, infrastructure for a new Bangsamoro Government Center, ₱5 million for a settler communities General Assembly, the cost of acquiring Al-Amanah Islamic Bank, and “other expenditures” covering unforeseen initiatives not otherwise in the act.

After that comes the Office of the Chief Minister at ₱1.50 billion, carrying most of the region's direct assistance programs — TABANG at ₱507.5 million, AMBaG medical assistance at ₱111 million, SALAM at ₱21.8 million, and a ₱17.3 million line for Marawi rehabilitation. Agriculture takes ₱1.27 billion, human settlements ₱720.8 million almost entirely in capital outlay, and the interior ministry ₱715.4 million with ₱503.7 million of it for rapid disaster response.

And the Parliament appropriated ₱400 million to itself — no personnel services, no capital outlay, entirely operating expenses.

Investment income and unspent prior-year appropriations had accumulated in the Treasury. As with the 2024 and 2026 supplementals, the act exists to put recovered money back into circulation rather than let it sit.

Read the 3 supplementals together and a pattern emerges that no single one of them shows. BAA 63 redistributed ₱8.44 billion of unspent money for 2024. This act redistributed ₱11.3 billion for 2025. BAA 91 redistributed ₱16.83 billion for 2026. That is ₱36.57 billion recovered across 3 years — and the figure grows every year. Supplementals of this kind are normally a sign of good housekeeping, sweeping up stragglers. A pool that doubles over 3 years is a sign of something else: the gap between what the region is appropriated and what it can convert into delivered services is not closing.

The composition of this particular act sharpens the point. ₱4.02 billion — more than a third — is not assigned to any program at all. It goes into a Contingent Fund whose releases depend on the Chief Minister's approval and whose stated purposes end with “other expenditures… including unforeseen initiatives not covered by this Act”. There are real and specific things in that list, including the first appearance in this registry of funding to acquire Al-Amanah Islamic Bank, which would give the region the country's only Islamic bank and a considerable head start on the Organic Law's Islamic finance mandate. But a third of a supplemental held in reserve is a large amount of unprogrammed discretion, and it is worth noticing that the money reaching this fund arrived precisely because it could not be programmed elsewhere.

Two object-level lines deserve a plain mention, because they are the kind that rarely surface outside an audit. The Office of the Chief Minister's ₱1.50 billion includes ₱404.2 million in representation expenses — hospitality and official entertainment — alongside ₱292.4 million in professional services and ₱35.5 million in consultancy. And the Parliament's own ₱400 million contains ₱80 million in representation expenses, ₱46.7 million in travel, and ₱213.3 million booked simply as “other maintenance and operating expenses”, with no further breakdown in the act. None of that is unlawful, and legislatures everywhere fund their own operations. But when a supplemental exists because money went unspent, ₱484 million in combined representation expenses across 2 offices is a figure a reader is entitled to see stated.

One last item for scale. The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples' Affairs received ₱2,250,000 in this act — 0.02% of it, less than a quarter of what the Office of the Wali received, and roughly a twentieth of the Sports Commission's ₱52 million. This was the year after BAA 64 made that ministry the gatekeeper for every concession, license and lease touching an ancestral domain in the region.