Dizon: Senate erred in cuts on DPWH budget
The reduced material costs presented by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) cannot be applied wholesale or to all line items under the general appropriations bill (GAB) as it resulted in inaccurate estimates for 10,000 projects, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon told the bicameral conference committee on Sunday.
Dizon in his presentation cited several projects which got fund reductions under the Senate version.
He said there was a wrong implementation of the adjustment factor that the DPWH gave the Senate, as seen in two asphalt overlay projects: one in Region IV-B or Mimaropa and another in Central Visayas or Region VII.
“We cannot just reduce the allocation across-the-board. In the GAB, in the House version, the budget was P41 million, in the Senate version it was cut to P12.9 million, or roughly by 68 percent, and I understand where the 68 percent basis came from, because for asphalt, and for Region IV-B, the adjustment factor that we sent to the Senate finance committee is 68 percent,” Dizon said.
He noted that the adjustment should have applied to the cost of materials only and not to the estimated expenses for the entire project.
Instead of cutting the Region IV-B project from P41.15 million to P12.96 million, the proper method would have been to bring it down to just P31.5 million.
This means if the Senate insists on its approved version, funding for the particular project would be short by P18.56 million.
The other side of the wrong computation, Dizon said, was that the Senate deducted only 3 percent from the P25.54-million project in Region VII, resulting in a new computation of P24.76 million.
Dizon said he understood that the funding slash was brought about by the adjustment factor for the region at negative 3 percent only, but the actual factor was supposed to be at negative 37 percent if the Senate looked at the program of works for the specific project.
So instead of just trimming the project allotment by P1 million, the Senate could have slashed it further by P8.736 million, or to P16.02 million.
