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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Ebrahin vows to collect IRA share for LGUs in BARMM

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Cotabato City—Chief Minister Al Hadj Murad Ebrahim has met with mayors of Bangsamoro municipalities that have not been given shares of the national internal revenue allotments (IRA) for years.

This developed as President Rodrigo Duterte has named three Cabinet members to the bilateral intergovernmental relations (IGR) mechanism on Budget, Management and Finance, in response to Ebrahim’s call on Malacanang to appoint its representatives to that body.

The IGR bodies, as provided under RA 11054, the Bangsamoro Organic Law, bridge and define relationships between the national government and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) on particular levels of governance, programs, and concerns.

Ebrahim and Regional Interior and Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo had earlier told an assembly of mayors, governors and members of local legislative bodies that granting IRA to regionally-created towns, tops the governing agenda of the BARMM.

BARMM Deputy Executive Secretary Abdullah Cusain said Ebrahim again spoke with the town mayors of Datu Salibo, Datu Hoffer, Mangudadatu, Pandag, Northern Kabuntalan, Datu Blah Sinsuat, Datu Anggal Midtimbang in Maguindanao, as well as Akbar, Al-Barka, Hadji Muhtamad, at Muhammad Ajul in Basilan.

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All 11 municipalities, being local creation of the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao from 2005 to 2008, have not been allocated with IRA shares by the national government.

Sinarimbo, who is also Ebrahim’s spokesman, said that concerns about the “IRA-less” BARMM towns have been taken up at the level of the national government, particularly during a recent meeting between the chief minister and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III.

Duterte has appointed Dominguez to head the IGR body for the national government, along with Socioeconomic and Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia and Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez as members.

Their regional counterpart is headed by Architect Edward Uy Guerra, BARMM finance minister, and Ebrahim’s appointee along with two others as members of the IGR body.

Ebrahim urged the local executives to complete all pending projects, to show firmness in their commitment to edtablish moral governance.

Ebrahim heads the five-province BARMM and its interim governing body, the Bangsamoro Transition Authority.

BTA is a fusion of the BARMM’s Executive Branch and a Parliament Legilature, in which members of a ruling majority can be concurrent Cabinet member-appointees. 

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