COTABATO CITY, Philippines – An incumbent executive of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), while upholding a vow to leave a “legacy of improved governance” to succeeding officials and the 4.2 million regional populace, have revealed a litany of sad realities in the ARMM they deemed beyond their power and capacity to resolve.

Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, ARMM executive secretary and known locally as the “wind beneath the wings” of the current regional governance, unveiled through a power-point presentation the root causes of the region’s snail-paced growth.

In his presentation entitled “Realities in the ARMM and the Way to ARMM Reform,” Sinarimbo placed inadequate budget and lack of fiscal autonomy of the region on top of the list of challenges besetting development interventions in the area.

“This is an honest assessment from the time I started working here until the time I (will) leave,” Sinarimbo said, referring to his powerpoint presentation, an improved version of his consistent exposures of problems in the autonomous governance.

Sinarimbo is one of the first appointees of ARMM acting Governor Ansaruddin Alonto Adiong, the elected vice governor who was installed to office on December 14, 2009 upon the suspension and detention of ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan in connection with the infamous Maguindanao massacre on November 23 that same year.

Adiong and his coterminous appointees alongside other regional elected officials will bow out of office on September 30, and be succeeded by officers-in-charge (OICs) to be installed by President Aquino the next day pursuant to Republic Act (RA) 13153, which defers the August 8, 2011 elections, and allows the President to appoint caretakers until 2013.

In his presentation, Sinarimbo said the ARMM system experiences “double” budget legislations – one by the Regional Legislative Assembly, and another by national Congress.

In the national budgetary legislation, he said, the ARMM ironically haggles annually with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) over the amount of the national government’s subsidy for the regional governance and the line agencies devolved (still unsubstantially) to it.

“The DBM imposes (budget) ceilings and the members of Congress decide how much and where funds will go,” Sinarimbo explained, saying that such fiscal policies are anathema to autonomy.

He said that the DBM is also “micromanaging” and directly managing funds of ARMM agencies as in undermining the authority of the regional governor.

“We should be given leeway to manage our funds,” Sinarimbo added.

He said the annual budget for the ARMM is less than one-percent of the national budget, highest at .69 percent in 2009, and lowest at .63 percent in 2010.

Contrary to lingering public perception that the ARMM is pampered financially, he said, major line agencies in the area of autonomy region like the Department of Education (DepEd), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) receive annual budgets lesser than their counterparts in all the country’s administrative regions.

Sinarimbo’s illustration disclosed a glaring gap between the sum of national government-funded infrastructure projects in the ARMM at P833 million this year, and the average share of each of the 12 other regions’ P2.9 billion.

The ARMM has the lowest literacy rate in the country at 70 percent compared to the national average of 94.3 percent, and is facing a shortage of 17,153 classrooms, statistics showed.

But Sinarimbo said the DepEd-ARMM in three years got a national subsidy of P4.5 billion while its counterparts in other region received an average of P7.7 billion each.

He also said the region’s revenue collection is hampered not only of the high poverty incidence and low investment caused by unstable peace and order, but hugely by a regulation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) directing large taxpayers in the region to pay in Makati City, leaving only small taxpayers to pay in the ARMM.