BARMM gets P5.3B budget for January

COTABATO CITY –– The Bangsamoro autonomous government has received the first P5.3 million of its P63.6 billion block grant from the national government this year, a senior Muslim official said Tuesday.

Assistant Executive Secretary Abdullah Cusain told reporters the money would be spent on the region’s programs, projects, and salaries of its workforce.

The amount is part of the autonomous region’s P63.6 billion block grant for 2020, a provision under Article XII, Section 15 of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), the law that created the expanded autonomous region, and was anchored upon the peace accord between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Section 15, Article XII of the BOL states the “national government shall provide an annual block grant as a share of the Bangsamoro government in the national internal revenue tax collections of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and collections of the Bureau of Customs.”

“A government is an organization covered by rules. Everything we do has guidelines that we have to follow,” Cusain said.

“We are not only observing laws but we also have to follow it—and this is what the Bangsamoro government, since the first day, do as part of the larger program we call moral governance,” he added.

Cusain said each of the region’s line agencies has been required to submit their budget execution documents to the Ministry of Finance and Budget and Management before their funding is released.

Former MILF chief, now interim Chief Minister Al Hajj Murad Ebrahim, leads the 80-member Bangsamoro Transition Authority, which governs the five-province region until the election of the regular members of its parliament in 2022.

Edited by Lzb