An Act Authorizing the Continued Use of Funds for the Release and Disbursement of Unpaid Obligations of FY 2023 Appropriations

This amends Section 50 of BAA 32, the 2023 General Appropriations Act of the Bangsamoro, so that the year's unpaid obligations can still be released and disbursed.

Appropriations stay available for release and obligation until 31 December 2024, except personnel services and General Administration and Support under operating expenses, which expire at the end of 2023. Disbursement is due by 31 December 2024 as a rule — but funds already obligated by that date for completing construction, inspection and payment of infrastructure, and for delivery, inspection and payment of operating expenses under Support to Operations and Operations and other capital outlays, stay valid until fully expended.

Two provisions do more than move dates. The shares of constituent local government units and the local government support fund, once released and obligated during the fiscal year, stay disbursable to the end of 2024 notwithstanding any other issuance. And a transfer rule closes a well-known gap: funds moved between organizational units, between ministries, or from a ministry to a local government are not treated as disbursed until the transferred amounts have actually been used to pay for completed construction, goods delivered and services rendered, inspected and accepted within the validity period.

At the end of validity, unreleased appropriations lapse and unexpended funds revert to the Bangsamoro Treasury under a Special Fund for reappropriation.

No explanatory note is attached. The bill was filed in November 2023 alongside Bill No. 265, which does the same work for the 2020 to 2022 appropriations, and both rest on the case Bill No. 179 had set out that May: a cash budgeting system adopted nationally in 2019 that a government in transition cannot execute inside a single year.

The transfer rule suggests a second, more particular reason. Recording a fund transfer as a disbursement is the standard way an agency appears to have spent money it has only moved, and a government extending its own budget deadlines has an obvious interest in knowing which of its numbers are real.

The transfer rule is the most useful sentence in the whole extension sequence, and it has nothing to do with deadlines. Treating a transfer between offices, or from a ministry to a local government, as a disbursement is how a budget can report high utilization while nothing has been built. This bill says the money is not disbursed until the transferred amount has actually paid for completed construction, delivered goods or rendered services, inspected and accepted inside the validity period.

That matters because of what surrounds it. Five bills in this registry extend budget validity, and each one rests on the claim that the region needs more time to spend. A rule that stops transfers counting as spending makes that claim checkable — it forces the utilization figures to mean what they appear to mean. Filed by the same Government of the Day in the same month as Bill No. 265, which moves in the opposite direction by making several categories available until fully expended, the 2 bills together tighten the measurement while loosening the deadline.

The protection of local government shares is the other thing to note. "Notwithstanding this provision and any other issuance" is strong drafting, and it is aimed at a specific risk: that a regional office holding a local government's money runs out of validity and the local government, which did nothing wrong, loses its share.

Enacted as BAA 52.