An Act Appropriating Funds for the Operation of the Bangsamoro Government from January One to December Thirty-One, Two Thousand and Twenty-Four and for Other Purposes

This is the region's budget for 2024 as filed — enacted, with the total unchanged, as BAA 56 — the FY 2024 Bangsamoro Expenditure Program, ₱98,467,200,000.00, carrying the theme "Accelerating Structural Reforms, Boosting Sustainable Development, and Enhancing Human Capital in the Bangsamoro".

Section 1 names the sources: the annual block grant, other subsidies from the National Government, the region's share of national taxes, fees and charges collected in its territory, unutilized prior years' appropriations from the Bangsamoro Treasury, unutilized prior year's allotments reverted to the Treasury, and projected collections on regional taxes, fees and charges.

That list is 1 item longer than the equivalent clause in the 2023 budget, which did not separately name allotments reverted to the Treasury.

An annual appropriations bill carries no explanatory note. Its argument is the allocation.

What the sources clause does argue, by adding reverted allotments as a named funding stream, is that money which lapsed from earlier years is now a planned part of the budget rather than a windfall — which follows directly from the 5 extension acts in this registry that kept earlier appropriations alive.

The headline is the growth. The 2023 budget, Bill No. 54 enacted as BAA 32, appropriated ₱85,359,315,687. This one proposes ₱98,467,200,000 — about 15% more in a single year, and roughly ₱13.1 billion in additional spending.

The more interesting change is in the sources clause. The 2023 Act drew on 5 streams; this one adds a sixth, "unutilized prior year's allotments reverted to the Bangsamoro Treasury". That is the money the extension acts in this registry were written about — appropriations the region could not spend inside their validity period, which lapse and revert under Section 19, Article XII of the Organic Law. Naming them as a funding source means the region has stopped treating unspent money as an embarrassment to be extended and started treating it as a predictable part of next year's budget.

Whether that is good discipline or an admission depends on which document you read it against. Bill No. 179's explanatory note argued that cash-based budgeting does not suit a government in transition and that the region needed longer validity periods; the 5 extension acts granted them, and Bill No. 265 eventually replaced a deadline with "until fully expended". Building reverted allotments into the next year's revenue is the opposite approach — let the money lapse, take it back, and reappropriate it properly. The 2 strategies are both present in the registry and they are not compatible.

One correction for anyone working from Parliament's index. It lists this measure at Second Reading, Committee Stage. It became law: BAA 56, ratified on 21 December 2023, appropriates ₱98,467,200,000.00 for fiscal year 2024 — the same figure to the peso, under the same cover theme. The index simply does not record the outcome, which is the same failure it shows for the 7 Special Geographic Area municipality bills and for Bill No. 36.