More provisions in DPWH, DA budgets questioned
As the bicameral conference committee remains in deadlock over the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) request for a slightly higher budget for 2026, there are still 8,499 proposed projects of the agency worth P144 billion that remain “risky and problematic” due to either overpricing or possibly repeating from previous budgets, a group of budget advocates warned on Tuesday.
In their latest analysis published in time for the third day of the bicam talks, the People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) said these include 2,436 projects that have already appeared in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for 2020 up to 2025; 1,374 out of 3,677 highway segments that have unusually high costs per kilometer, as well as 820 out of 867 farm-to-market roads (FMRs) and 3,040 multipurpose halls that have “very round numbers” and therefore likely not properly costed.
For the repeating projects, PBC said these are valued at P28 billion and represent at least 14 percent of the 17,179 DPWH projects for 2026.
Some such examples on their BetterGov.ph transparency portal include:
• P401.6-million Davao City Bypass Construction Project Package 1 that supposedly went to Sunwest Inc. that appeared in the 2023 and 2025 budgets;
• Construction of Multi-Purpose Building, Barangay San Miguel, Jordan, Guimaras (P102 million) that appeared in 2021, 2022 and 2023 budgets even though it was already reported as 100-percent complete in 2022;
• Pangaloan Bridge (B00463NR) along Dumaguete North Rd (Jct Bais-Kabankalan-Negros Occ Bdry) worth P102 million that appeared in the 2022 and 2023 budgets and which was marked 92.8-percent complete in both years, and
• Calaguiman Bridge (B01701LZ) along Roman Expressway (P97 million) marked 100-percent complete in 2023.
For the risky highway segments, PBC flagged in particular Andaya Highway in Bicol as having the “darkest red flags” as it had 11 segments worth P333 million for only five kilometers, with the segments having varying costs from P56 million to P156 million per kilometer.
Other highways with very high-risk segments include Maharlika Highway (46.07 percent of 332 segments worth P7.6 billion); Davao Highway (44.50 percent of 155 segments worth P2.8 billion), and Ilocos Highway (75.75 percent of 51 segments worth P1.24 billion), PBC said.
For multipurpose halls, PBC flagged at least P31 billion worth of projects that had duplicate amounts.
Specifically, it noted 1,351 projects that all cost P5 million; 478 projects that all cost P10 million, and 432 projects that all cost P3 million.
This was the same problem for FMRs—which are under the Department of Agriculture (DA) but are also seen as problematic infrastructure projects—which had 549 projects that cost exactly P15 million; 121 projects cost exactly P30 million, and 75 projects cost exactly P20 million—all totaling P14.9 billion worth of risky FMRs.
Beyond this, PBC noted that many do not even have specific locations or chainage (distance) data.
Many of these were located in Cagayan province, which has at least P1 billion worth of risky FMRs based on this category
These figures cast a spectre over Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon’s appeal for Congress to adopt the House version of his agency’s budget, which is at P624 billion compared to the Senate’s P570 billion, to save at least 10,000 projects supposedly affected by sweeping cuts on material costs.
In an interview with the Inquirer, PBC coconvener Adolfo Jose Montesa said this is a problem because Dizon is appealing for the bicam to adopt the House version so it can reinstate at least P45 billion that was cut from the agency budget due to reductions in the Construction Materials Price Data (CMPD).
The agency uses the CMPD as a basis to estimate material costs for project budgets and Dizon had initially agreed to further budget cuts in the DPWH budget after he himself revised the CMPD to reduce overpricing.
With the new estimates, the Senate thus cut P45 billion from the House version of the DPWH budget.
Suddenly, however, Dizon appealed to reinstate these cuts as it could affect the implementation of at least 10,000 projects for next year. (See related story on A2.)
If the bicam relents, then there is a chance that the 2026 budget will contain these “risky projects,” Montesa noted. “The problem is that he (Dizon) is not giving the itemized list of what projects need higher budgets. [And] we’re more confident in the process that the Senate did compared to the House.”
More than that, Montesa added, PBC estimates that the House version of the DPWH budget was riskier than the Senate version by about P110 billion more as it contained 14,000 projects worth P255 billion that were either repeating from previous years’ budgets or were possibly overpriced.
Compared to the Senate version, the number was cut down to 8,500 projects worth P144 billion, he added.
The problem, Montesa said, is that the House contingent in the bicam led by Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Suansing were more incentivized to “secure projects for their districts.”
“If the House’s incentive is to secure projects for their district, some of them might have good intentions for development. But some of them, we’ve seen this, may have bad intentions for their own personal or political interests, and the role of the Senate is to be a check against that,” he pointed out.
“That’s why again, we’re pushing for the Senate version at least for now (even if it still contains red flags). You have to re-earn the trust of the people in the DPWH in the budget process before we allow the DPWH to have higher budgets again,” he said.
