GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 7 November) – Social welfare investments in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) reached P71 billion in the last six years, mostly funded by the national government, data from the Ministry of Social Services and Development (MSSD) showed.
Minister Raissa Jajurie disclosed the figure in the MSSD Transition Report she presented to journalists during the “Tanglaw: A Media Forum on Bridging Communication for Effective Social Services in the Bangsamoro” here on Thursday.
Jajurie said that funds allocated by the national government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), amounted to P51.82 billion while the Bangsamoro government allotted P19.23 billion during the period.
“Personally, I was surprised na ganon nga kalaki (that the national government funding for social welfare programs in the BARMM is huge),” she said.
She attributed the huge social welfare spending of the national government in the Bangsamoro region mostly to the DSWD’s 4Ps program or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, the national poverty reduction strategy and human capital investment program that provides conditional cash transfer to poor households.
She said the implementation of the 4Ps in the Bangsamoro region, at one point, reached 370,000 households, a record number in the country.
Jajurie noted the country’s poverty alleviation target would suffer a setback if the 4Ps beneficiaries in the BARMM would be taken off the list.
“So kung tatanggalin ninyo yun (if you remove them) … you will not be addressing the whole poverty picture in the country,” she said.
Apart from 4Ps, the DSWD projects implemented in the Bangsamoro region include the sustainable livelihood program, supplementary feeding program, and social pension program for indigent senior citizens.
In 2019, the national government allocated P6.08 billion for social welfare investments in the BARMM, P10.38 billion in 2020, P8.89 billion in 2021, P8.04 billion in 2022, P6.71 billion in 2023, P8.13 billion in 2024 and P3.6 billion in 2025, Jajurie reported.
On the other hand, the Bangsamoro government’s allotment for social welfare programs was P2.03 billion in 2020, P3.48 billion in 2021, P2.80 billion in 2022, P3.18 in 2023, P3.89 billion in 2024 and P3.85 billion in 2025, she said.
For 2019, BARMM, then newly created, utilized the defunct ARMM’s budget for social welfare programs in the region, Jajurie said.
Jajurie said the national government needs BARMM, and vice versa, to reduce poverty incidence in the region.
“There’s a mutual interest, especially those programs that were already there before BARMM was established,” she added.
The Bangsamoro region was established in 2019 following the ratification of Republic Act 11054 or the Organic Law for the BARMM, also known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law. It replaced the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The creation of the Bangsamoro autonomous region is the major component of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), which the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front inked in 2014 after 17 years of peace negotiations.
Jajurie noted that the Bangsamoro region needs nationally-funded programs “to cover as many bases as possible while we also implement poverty alleviation, malnutrition programs, early childhood care, and anti-child labor, among others, which also may have an equivalent program from the national government.”
The bulk of the annual funds of the Bangsamoro region comes from the block grant, which is automatically allocated by the national government.
The amount of the block grant is equivalent to 5% of the net national internal revenue tax collection and the net collection of the Bureau of Customs from the third fiscal year immediately preceding the current fiscal year, according to the Department of Finance. (Bong S. Sarmiento / MindaNews)
