Beyond flood mess: More DPWH ‘insertions’ tagged
It seems that flood control projects are not the only part in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) budget that may be prone to abuse.
During deliberations on next year’s DPWH budget at the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Akbayan Rep. Perci Cendaña drew attention to the agency’s Convergence and Special Support Program (CSSP), which is intended to provide for the infrastructure needs of other government agencies, such as access roads leading to airports, seaports, tourism destinations and economic zones.
A review of the budget line for the program shows that it covers a wide range of projects from roads, public buildings, rainwater collection systems to evacuation centers.
The budget for the CSSP has also ballooned since 2022, and often even gets a higher allocation than the amount originally requested.
For the past four years, the CSSP has been allocated a total of more than P1.6 billion, of which P822 billion were insertions from the National Expenditure Program (NEP) to the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
The NEP is the proposed annual spending plan of the national government that the Department of Budget and Management prepares and presents to the President and the Cabinet for approval before it is submitted to Congress.
Once scrutinized and approved separately by both the House and the Senate, a bicameral conference committee is formed to reconcile differences between the two chambers’ version of the proposed national budget to come up with the general appropriations bill (GAB) that, in turn, is sent to the President for signing into the GAA.
Increasing amount
In 2024 for example, the DPWH requested P174.08 billion for the CSSP in the NEP but eventually got P410.9 billion under the GAA.
The same went for 2025, when the agency asked for P221.5 billion but got P486.2 billion in the GAA.
In fact, it annually gets more funding compared to the DPWH’s flood management program, which has gotten P804 billion in the past four years.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon affirmed during the hearing that there were flood control projects being inserted in the CSSP through its subprogram called the Sustainable Infrastructure Programs Alleviating Gaps (Sipag).
From 2022 to 2025, flood control projects—labeled “flood mitigation structures protecting major strategic public buildings/facilities” under the Sipag program—got a total of P211 billion, with the most in 2024 at P71.2 billion.
“Rest assured that we removed all that (in the 2026 budget proposal). And what I can say is that regardless of what type of project this is—convergence, local, foreign-assisted, flagship—we will scrutinize them all, starting from procurement to the eventual awarding (of contract) regardless of where these projects are in the budgetary allocations of the DPWH,” Dizon noted.
In a separate statement, Cendaña expressed alarm at the huge amount being allocated to this program annually and warned that it was “very prone to abuse because this can be used to justify huge insertions.”
“We hope the newly formed Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) will include the CSSP in its scope of investigation. Since it funds a wide range of projects—not just flood control, there is also a great fear of abuse of the funds,” he added.
Insertions at bicam
Also in the same hearing, the DPWH confirmed that the controversial insertions in the 2025 national budget that led to the ballooning of the DPWH budget came from the bicameral conference committee and not from the House’s small committee.
DPWH Director for Planning Services Alex Bote relayed this to Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo, husband of then appropriations senior vice chair Stella Quimbo, adding that the department discovered them only after the final GAA was released.
This came after Quimbo noted that the House actually reduced the proposed DPWH budget from P898 billion in the NEP to P825 billion—or by P73.7 billion—when it transmitted the House’s version of the GAB to the Senate.
He added that this proved that the real changes happened during the bicam led by former appropriations chair and Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co and Senate finance chair Grace Poe and not during the House small committee then chaired by his wife.
“The job of the small committee in the House is only to make institutional changes,” he noted. “(These insertions) were a byproduct of the technical working group of that bicam. Let’s not confuse the public.”
Moving forward, the Marikina lawmaker asked Dizon to support a proposal that would require proponents of projects or insertions to identify themselves so they could defend it publicly.
“There are too many people who are being implicated when they shouldn’t be. The proponents must fight for their insertions if they think it’s right,” he added.
