An Act Creating the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Defining Its Powers and Functions, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This creates a Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources as the principal agency responsible for the region's fisheries and aquatic resources, taking those functions out of MAFAR.

A Minister and Deputy Minister appointed by the Chief Minister head it, with ministry services beneath them and — the detail that distinguishes this bill from its 2 siblings — Provincial, Municipal *and City* Fisheries Offices. Neither the agrarian reform bill nor the agriculture bill establishes city-level offices; the fisheries bill does, which follows from where fishing communities actually are.

Section 10 attaches the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority in the BARMM to the new ministry, bringing the national body's regional presence under regional supervision.

The transition mechanics are identical in all 3 and unusually careful for a reorganisation. The relevant MAFAR units and the corresponding Office of the Bangsamoro Director-General are abolished, with their powers, funds, appropriations, records, equipment, property and personnel transferred across. The whole transfer — including the new internal structure, staffing pattern, operating system and revised budget — must be completed within 6 months, and existing staff hold their posts in holdover capacity until new appointments issue. In filling the new positions, preference goes to personnel of the abolished office, provided they meet Civil Service qualification standards, with seniority breaking ties between equally qualified candidates.

The region's geography is the argument. The Bangsamoro includes Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Basilan — island provinces whose economies are built on fishing and seaweed — alongside the inland lake and river systems of Lanao del Sur and the Maguindanao provinces. Fisheries is not a subsidiary of agriculture here; for a large share of the population it is the primary livelihood.

The city offices and the attachment of the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority both follow from treating fisheries as a sector in its own right rather than a division of an agriculture ministry.

Of the 3 bills in this package, this is the one with the strongest independent case, and the reason is demographic rather than administrative. A region containing Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Basilan has a fishing population large enough that folding it into an agriculture ministry structurally subordinates it — and the region's own legislation bears that out, since the agriculture and fisheries training institute created by BAA 59 had to write in a Training Officer for every island province precisely because the mainland tends to absorb the attention.

The city offices are the quiet evidence that the drafting was thought through rather than copied. The companion bills give their ministries provincial and municipal offices; this one adds cities, which is where fish landings, cold storage and markets concentrate. Where the template was followed mechanically elsewhere in the package, here it was adapted.

Attaching the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority is the provision whose effect is hardest to predict. It brings a national body's regional operations under a regional ministry, which is what meaningful autonomy over fisheries would require — and it is the same assertion of regional supremacy over a national agency's regional presence that runs through the indigenous peoples act and the electoral code. The bill states it in 1 sentence and does not address how it sits against the national charter of the body being attached.

These 3 bills are one proposal filed as three. MP Mawallil lodged Bill No. 11, Bill No. 12 and Bill No. 15 together in September 2022, and read in sequence they take the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform apart: Bill 11 lifts agrarian reform into a ministry of its own, Bill 12 does the same for fisheries and aquatic resources, and Bill 15 renames what is left the Ministry of Agriculture and reorganises it around that narrower mandate. Each bill draws its start-up money from the corresponding line in MAFAR's existing appropriation, so the package is designed to be budget-neutral at the point of separation. All 3 remain at Second Reading, Committee Stage; MAFAR is still 1 ministry.