Rechanneling corrupted funds
Billions of pesos are lost every year through blatant corruption, misplaced priorities, and politically driven projects. Public funds wasted result in a classroom left unfinished or a farmer deprived of irrigation.
Condemning corruption is not enough. We must ask: where should these funds go instead? If redirected properly, even a fraction of the billions misused could finance programs in nutrition, health, education, and agriculture—the cornerstones of national development that determine whether growth is truly inclusive, sustainable, and felt by every Filipino.
The current state of misallocation. Between 2023 and 2025, congressional insertions in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) reportedly reached P540 billion, about 22 percent of the National Expenditure Program (NEP). Around P380 billion of this went to flood control projects, many inserted during the bicameral phase. Some were duplicates of earlier works; others turned out to be “ghost,” “half-ghost,” or substandard projects.
Recent Senate hearings also uncovered more than P10 billion worth of farm-to-market roads (FMRs) under the 2023 and 2024 budgets that were ”extremely overpriced.” One project in Tacloban City, for instance, cost P348,000 per meter, about 23 times the DPWH’s standard rate of P15,000. In Bicol, 80 FMR projects recorded a 68 percent markup, ballooning from P520 million to P1.7 billion. Such figures reflect systemic leakages in the public investment process.
From 2018 to 2025, total flood control allocations reached P1.2 trillion, more than the combined 2024 budgets for health and social welfare. Yet, the Commission on Audit (COA) verified fewer than half as completed. Several were built in low-risk areas, while flood-prone provinces like Bulacan, Pampanga, Cagayan, and parts of Metro Manila remain vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the social services sector continues to be left behind. The Department of Health received only P29 billion in 2025 for hospital construction and equipment, less than 3 percent of the DPWH budget. The Department of Education faces a backlog of 159,000 classrooms and 50,000 teacher vacancies. Agricultural spending remains at around 1.5 percent of the national budget, far below the 3-4 percent average among Asean peers. Programs for the first 2,000 days of life, covering maternal nutrition, child care, and early learning, receive less than P5 billion yearly despite their high economic returns.
Redirecting and reforming. To end the recurring cycle of waste and misuse, the government must go beyond simply tightening controls. The real challenge is redirecting resources toward programs that directly improve lives, where every peso invested yields long-term productivity and inclusive growth.
1. The Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council should regularly evaluate whether budget priorities remain consistent with the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework and social development goals. To ensure that priority measures receive serious attention at the appropriate House and Senate committees, the President should convene LEDAC at least once a month. This will allow continuous monitoring, problem-solving, and legislative-executive coordination until the end of the 20th Congress.
2. Transparency must serve not only to expose misuse but also to guide reallocation. A real-time budget transparency and reinvestment portal should track both project implementation and underutilized funds, allowing government and civil society to propose how these may be redirected to urgent social needs such as feeding programs, classroom repairs, community hospitals, and agricultural support—expanding nutrition programs, upgrading rural health systems, strengthening basic education, and modernizing agriculture
3. Infrastructure spending should be guided by science, not politics. The DPWH, in coordination with the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Science and Technology, should ensure that FMRs and flood control projects are prioritized in areas with high poverty incidence and food insecurity, not in politically favored zones.
4. Accountability mechanisms must also be firm. The COA should conduct forensic audits of DPWH flood control projects from 2018 to 2025, verifying fund releases against actual completion. The Bureau of Internal Revenue should require asset declarations from top contractors and compare these with tax filings. The Anti-Money Laundering Council must track suspicious transactions tied to public works contracts, while the Commission on Elections should review campaign donations from favored contractors. What we arrive at from these efforts should be institutionalized as a template for future administrations, ensuring that transparency, accountability, and evidence-based budgeting become standard practice rather than temporary fixes.
A call for fiscal integrity. Corruption is not only the theft of money but the loss of opportunity. It deprives children of nourishment, farmers of support, and teachers of tools to educate the next generation.
Redirecting misused funds toward nutrition, health, education, and agriculture is both a fiscal and moral imperative. Public funds must fulfill their true purpose—to serve the nation, not the few. Only then can every peso truly work for the Filipino people.
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Gary B. Teves is a Filipino politician and public servant who served as secretary of the Department of Finance.
