Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Finance, Budget and Management
Approved as BAA No. 34Now
Parliament Bill No. 127
ApprovedCabinet measureAn Act Extending the 2020 and 2021 Special Development Fund
Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Finance, Budget and Management
Approved as BAA No. 34Now
Passed third reading. This measure has cleared Parliament.
What this measure does
One amendment, in one section, to one line of a budget law. This rewrites Section 3 of BAA 22 — the Special Development Fund appropriations for 2020 and 2021 — to keep that money alive until 31 December 2023.
The extension is graded by what the money buys. Everything stays available for release and disbursement until the end of 2023. Infrastructure capital outlays may be obligated until then, with construction, inspection and payment allowed to run on to 30 June 2024. Maintenance and other operating expenses and other capital outlays may also be obligated until the end of 2023, with delivery, inspection and payment permitted until 31 March 2024.
The finance ministry issues the guidelines. That is the entire bill: 3 sections, 1 page, no appropriation of its own.
Why it was proposed
There is no explanatory note on the filed copy. The Special Development Fund is the money the national government committed to the region under the peace agreement, appropriated regionally for 2020 and 2021, and a cash-based budget makes an appropriation expire at the end of its year.
The unstated premise is that the money had not been spent. An extension bill is only ever filed because the alternative — letting the appropriation lapse and reverting the balance — would mean the projects it was meant to build do not get built.
Who it affects
- Communities waiting on Special Development Fund projects from the 2020 and 2021 programs.
- Ministries and offices holding unobligated or undisbursed balances from those years.
- Contractors on infrastructure whose completion, inspection and payment window moves to mid-2024.
- The Ministry of Finance, Budget and Management, which writes the guidelines and administers the cash budgeting system.
Who would implement it
- Ministry of Finance, Budget and Management (MFBM) — guidelines for the cash budgeting system as amended
Funding
No appropriation. No new money. The bill extends the life of appropriations already made under BAA 22 rather than adding to them.
What changes if it becomes law
- The 2020 and 2021 Special Development Fund stays spendable through 2023 instead of lapsing.
- Infrastructure work funded from it may be completed and paid up to 30 June 2024.
- Operating and other capital items may be delivered and paid up to 31 March 2024.
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 interest in this bill is not in the text, which is 1 page, but in the sequence it belongs to. The same fund is extended again 11 months later by Bill No. 265, which pushes the 2020 to 2022 Special Development Fund to 31 December 2024 and then adds the phrase that matters more than any date: the money is to remain available "until fully expended or disbursed". A deadline replaced by a condition is a different instrument altogether.
Enacted as BAA 34 on 22 December 2022 — 9 days before the appropriations it rescues would have lapsed. Its companion, Bill No. 128, became BAA 33 on the same day. Budget extension bills in this registry are consistently passed in the last weeks of December, which tells you they are not planned instruments but responses to a year ending with money unspent.
What no document in this sequence contains is the amount. The bill moves a date; it does not say how much of the 2020 and 2021 Special Development Fund was still sitting there when the year ran out. That figure would answer the question the extension raises, and it is not in the law, the bill, or the index.
Sources