An Act to Recognize, Protect, Promote and Strengthen the Bangsamoro Rights to Rural Electrification, Creating a Bangsamoro Electrification Administration (Bea), Defining Its Powers and Functions, and Appropriating Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes

This creates the Bangsamoro Electrification Administration as a government-owned and controlled corporation attached to the Office of the Chief Minister, headquartered in Cotabato City, with an initial corporate life of 50 years renewable for another 50.

Its purpose is the total electrification of the region on an area coverage basis, and its instrument is the electric cooperative. The BEA is to promote and support the cooperatives supplying electric service and to give them institutional, financial and technical assistance so they become economically and financially viable.

The powers over those cooperatives are the substance of the bill, and they are considerable. The BEA may issue orders, rules and regulations, conduct investigations and referenda, impose preventive or disciplinary measures including the suspension or removal of cooperative board members and officers, and appoint an independent board of directors in a cooperative where necessary. Section 17 gives it step-in rights: it may take over the operations of an ailing electric cooperative, with due process. Section 18 provides that no injunction or restraining order may issue against a BEA order except from the Court of Appeals, on a bond.

The money is stated. The Bangsamoro Government provides initial capitalisation of ₱100,000,000, included in the appropriations act, and may increase its subscription later. The corporation has capital stock in 10 million no-par shares, with 1 million originally subscribed and paid by the Bangsamoro Government at ₱50 per share; the Chief Minister, or whoever Parliament designates, votes the government’s shares.

Oversight is close. Every BEA order, rule, regulation, corporate officer appointment, and every transaction over ₱500,000 requires the approval of the Office of the Chief Minister — but is deemed approved if the Office has not acted within 30 days. A separate Power Development Council coordinates across the sector, chaired by a designee of the Chief Minister and seating the National Power Corporation manager, the BEA Administrator, a parliamentary representative, a representative of the electric cooperatives, and one from the Philippine Electric Plant Owners Association. It must meet at least monthly and adopt an integrated electrification and power development plan.

The explanatory note is direct about the problem: the region has endured inadequate and unreliable electricity for a long time, and the consequences run through education, healthcare and economic growth. It presents the bill as a regional replication of the national rural electrification model — which is to say, a Bangsamoro version of the National Electrification Administration — with particular emphasis on underserved areas, and argues that a stable power supply is the foundation for investment and development rather than an aspiration on top of it.

The most important question this bill raises is one it never addresses: what happens to the National Electrification Administration. Electric cooperatives in the Bangsamoro are currently supervised by NEA under national law, and this bill hands a regional corporation the power to investigate them, suspend and remove their officers, install independent boards, and take over their operations. Two supervisors with the same powers over the same cooperatives is an intergovernmental question of the first order, and the text contains no transition clause, no coordination mechanism with NEA, and no statement of how the two mandates fit. That is the issue the committee will have to resolve.

The capital stock section does not add up. Section 10 says capital stock is divided into 10 million no-par shares; 10.1 subscribes 1 million to the Bangsamoro Government, and 10.2 then refers to "the remaining five million shares". One million and five million do not make ten, and the paragraphs that follow allocate voting power without accounting for the gap. It is arithmetic rather than policy, but it is in the charter of a corporation, where share counts matter.

The board provision contradicts itself in a way that matters more. Section 12 says the two cooperative nominees and the two power-systems experts are appointed by the Chief Minister. The paragraph immediately after says the appointive directors are appointed by the President of the Philippines, from a shortlist prepared by the national Governance Commission for GOCCs, on the recommendation of the Chief Minister, for a non-renewable four-year term. Those are two different appointing authorities for the same seats — and the second routes appointments to a Bangsamoro corporation through the national executive, which is a substantive constitutional question sitting inside what looks like a drafting error.

One smaller thing, easy to miss and worth fixing: Section 4 establishes the corporation under the name "Bangsamoro Electrification Administration Act of 2023". The corporation is named after the statute.

On its progress: filed November 2023, First Reading a week later, and then no movement on the index until April 2026, when it was referred to the Committees on Environment, Natural Resources and Energy and on Finance.