Senate looks into ‘diverted’ farm-to-market roads
The Senate is looking into how billions of pesos in farm-to-market road projects were realigned to areas linked to former Speaker Martin Romualdez and resigned House appropriations committee chair Rep. Zaldy Co despite not being included in the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) master plan.
“That’s what we’re investigating now. We’re getting documents for 2023, 2024 and 2025. But for sure for 2025, this also came out during the hearing last week, half of the farm-to-market roads were not in the master plan of the [DA],” Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the Senate finance committee, said in an interview with radio dzBB.
“This means they were replaced by [the House] or the Senate. I don’t know which one, but they were replaced during the budget process. That’s why so many of the farm-to-market roads for 2025, half of them, were for later release or FLR because they were not in the master plan. That’s what came out,” he added.
Asked if these were “insertions,” Gatchalian said: “These were not inserted in a sense because the DA submitted a list, and the list was replaced, so those were amendments.”
He added that the master plan or the original request submitted by the DA was verified.
“That’s what they would recommend in the National Expenditure Program. But if it were not approved, those were replaced, they cannot implement the program or the farm-to-market road because they were not validated. Either these would be delayed or would not be implemented because it did not match their master plan,” Gatchalian said.
‘Where projects came in’
The senator also said there were structures being added even if the communities concerned did not need them.
“It means even if they were not in the master plan, they’re being implemented by the DPWH. There was no coordination with the DA, so there were projects the agency did not know were implemented or they did not know… the project cost,” he said.
“We’re having a hard time because they were pointing fingers at each other. That’s why I told them to better do it so there would only be one accountable,” Gatchalian said.
Another aspect the Senate wants to investigate is where the subject projects came in.
“I’m very sure that it was during the budget process. I’m not yet sure if it was [the House] or the Senate… but for me it was not coincidental that it was Regions 5 (Bicol) and 8 (Eastern Visayas). These are the [bailiwicks] of the top two officials of Congress. But having said that, we still have to review where these projects came in,” Gatchalian said.
“If you look at it, the country’s food basket is located in Regions 2 and 3, Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan. Those were the food granary of our country but they were not among the top [recipients of] farm-to-market roads. You establish farm-to-market roads in provinces where the products include rice, so that they can reach the market,” he said.
“And we also have to determine how these were funded, if it suddenly appeared in the bicameral conference committee or in Congress, [because] the budget for those farm-to-market roads suddenly increased,” he said.
During the panel’s hearing last week on the proposed P176.7-billion budget for the DA, Gatchalian said farm-to-market roads worth more than P10 billion were found to be “extremely overpriced,” with one project even costing more than 23 times the standard price set by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel said earlier the DPWH set a P15,000-per-meter standard cost for FMRs, noting this standard price was already “too high” since the cost-per-meter of FMRs could be as low as P10,000 when the “30 percent” excess was trimmed.
