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

This is the second supplemental budget in this registry funded the same way as the first — “out of the unutilized prior years' appropriations from the Bangsamoro Treasury”. Where the 2024 supplemental redistributed ₱8.44 billion of unspent money, this one redistributes ₱16.83 billion.

The composition has shifted decisively. In 2024 agriculture led at 43.6%. Here the Ministry of Labor and Employment takes ₱6.67 billion — 39.6% of the entire act — in a single program line called Employment Facilitation and Promotion. Broken down by object, ₱4.15 billion of it is labour and wages and ₱2.38 billion is financial assistance and subsidy. The same ministry received ₱148 million in the 2024 supplemental.

Agriculture follows at ₱2.75 billion, environment and energy at ₱1.32 billion, and the Office of the Chief Minister at ₱1.08 billion — ₱720 million of that for the TABANG assistance program and ₱360 million for internet connectivity, booked as subscription expenses.

Then two special purpose funds. A ₱1 billion Miscellaneous Personnel Benefit Fund covers salary deficiencies, newly created positions and compensation adjustments. And a ₱2 billion Contingent Fund whose stated uses include digitalising the bureaucracy, a Transitional Development Impact Fund, Islamic finance programs, customs duties on foreign assistance, infrastructure for a new Bangsamoro Government Center — and “provision for cost of acquisition of Al-Amanah Islamic Bank and other related costs”.

The general provisions are tighter than the 2024 version: procurement is routed through PhilGEPS under the New Government Procurement Act, and the validity window runs to 30 June 2028 with Personnel Services expiring earlier, on 31 December 2027.

Because ₱16.83 billion of previously appropriated money remained unspent. As with the 2024 supplemental, the act exists to recover spending capacity rather than to distribute new revenue.

Two things about this act deserve to be stated plainly, without inference beyond what the text shows.

The first is the concentration. ₱6.67 billion — 39.6% of the whole act — sits in one program, at one ministry, and ₱4.15 billion of it is classified as labour and wages. In the 2024 supplemental the labour ministry received ₱148 million; this is roughly 45 times that. Large emergency employment programs are a legitimate and common instrument, particularly in a region with the country's highest poverty incidence, and the money is drawn from funds that would otherwise have lapsed. But a wages line of that size, in a single ministry, is the largest single commitment this registry has recorded in any act, and it is worth knowing it exists.

The second is the timing. Parliament passed this on 20 May 2026 and the Chief Minister approved it the following day — in the closing period of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority, the appointed body that has governed since 2019, ahead of the region's first elected Parliament. The spending authority it creates runs to 30 June 2028, and for infrastructure completion to 31 December 2028. In other words, an outgoing appointed legislature has committed ₱16.83 billion of spending authority extending roughly two years past its own existence, including a ₱2 billion Contingent Fund releasable at the Chief Minister's discretion for purposes that expressly include “unforeseen initiatives not covered by this Act”. Nothing in that is unlawful — supplementals routinely outlive the sessions that pass them, and the cash budgeting rules force reversion of anything unused. It is simply a fact about who decided, when, and for how long.

The Al-Amanah line is the most consequential item hidden in a special provision. Al-Amanah Islamic Investment Bank of the Philippines is the country's only Islamic bank, and Section 32, Article XII of the Organic Law directs the Bangsamoro Government to develop an Islamic banking and finance system. Acquiring the institution rather than chartering a new one would be the fastest route to that, and it is authorised here in a single clause inside a contingency fund rather than by a dedicated act. Whether the acquisition proceeds, and on what terms, is not something this act settles.