Maharlika Highway next on DPWH’s rehab list
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) will start this year the massive rehabilitation of the Maharlika Highway, the country’s principal transport backbone connecting the islands of Luzon, Samar, Leyte, and Mindanao, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon announced on Monday.
The Daang Maharlika (Maharlika Road, also known as Pan-Philippine Highway) is one of the most important thoroughfares in the country. It is a network of roads that starts from Laoag City in the Ilocos region, slithering through Cagayan Valley, going through Central Luzon and Metro Manila and then southern Luzon and Bicol, before crossing seas toward Eastern Visayas region and then down to Zamboanga City in Mindanao.
Parts of the more than 3,300-kilometer highway built in the 1960s have been pockmarked with potholes and in general state of disrepair, including its segments in Samar and Bicol, according to Dizon.
“This year, for the first time since the construction and completion of the Maharlika Highway, there will be a massive rehabilitation starting this year,” Dizon said in a press conference. “When I say massive, I mean, we will repair all the damaged segments of the Maharlika Highway—from north to south.”
“It has never had a major rehabilitation, that’s why Maharlika Highway turned out like that,” Dizon said.
No highway more important
“There is no road, there is no highway more important than Maharlika Highway,” Dizon said.
“Unfortunately, instead of making this a priority in the past years and decades, the repair of roads and bridges nationwide, the money of DPWH went somewhere,” he also said, amid former DPWH officials’ entanglement in a multibillion-peso corruption scandal involving flood control projects.
President Marcos earlier ordered the immediate rehabilitation of this important highway, according to 4Ps party list Rep. Marcelino Libanan.
He said the President’s directive was relayed to him by Dizon himself during a brief conversation on the sidelines of the Dec. 9, 2025, meeting of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, the government’s highest policy-coordination body chaired by the Chief Executive.
Dizon said the rehabilitation will cost at least P16 billion, according to initial figures.
“That’s the initial figure I saw, but it’s possible to go up—we need to spend a big amount on Maharlika [Highway],” the DPWH chief noted.
Libanan, a former Eastern Samar representative, said the DPWH would tap its projected savings to fund the highway’s rehabilitation.
Last year, Dizon said the DPWH was looking to rack up to P60 billion in savings for 2026 by aligning the prices of construction materials, such as steel, gravel, and cement, with prevailing market rates to stop what he called as “opportunities for corruption.”
Mounting complaints
Complaints of the deplorable conditions and widespread deterioration of the highway have been mounting for years.
In September 2022, the DPWH said it would undertake a full rehabilitation of Daang Maharlika in the next six years as part of the Marcos administration’s “Build Better More” program to provide unimpeded travel and reduce the cost of transporting goods.
“One of the priority programs of this administration is to reduce transport cost and to do that, we want to construct, rehabilitate the trunklines of the national road system. We want to provide safe, unimpeded travel of our vehicles throughout to reduce the cost of transport,” said then Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan to the House of Representatives appropriations committee during a budget briefing.
In May 2023, House Bill No. 8197 was filed to propose declaring the Daang Maharlika as the “National Food Highway” to perk up the country’s agriculture.
In February 2025, through an open letter posted on his diocese’s Facebook page, Bishop Eugenius Cañete of the Diocese of Gumaca in Quezon province slammed the government over the “poor condition” of Maharlika Highway, calling it the “worst highway” in Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) region. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
