The bureaucracy of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) is grossly undersized for the region’s growing number of programs and projects.
Contractors serving the region’s infrastructure programs have complained of “very slow” processing of payments of delivered contracted services and goods.
Two of the busiest agencies, the Ministry of the Interior and Local Governments (MILG) and the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) had the most number of projects awarded to private contractors.
MILG Minister Naguib Sinarimbo said the agencies concerned are considering options to improve on the processing of payments for completed contracts.
For one, he has recommended the expansion of the size of staffing on such essential office levels as the Finance and Management Services of agencies with the most number of programs and projects being implemented.
Service providers have protested instances of long delayed processing of payments for completed projects.
A certain service provider said one complete payment extends up to “almost one year” in BARMM. Although no specific agency was mentioned, infrastructure programs were often affected by such delays.
Sinarimbo said the MILG has a small finance office with only up to three personnel working on ledger entries of accounting obligations of all disbursement vouchers in the processing of payments.
Another area of concern is the term of disbursement orders which provides the policy of reverting unspent (but already) obligated funds back to the issuing agency, the Ministry of Finance Budget and Management, in the case of the BARMM.
The ministry, he said, has recommended a review of such a policy which best suited a cash-based disbursement system in a very reserved state of resources and disbursement.
Sinarimbo said it was hardly foreseen in his ministry that with the agency’s expanded number of programs, there had to be a corresponding increase in the staffing design of its structural levels.