The Philippines has spent trillions on flood-control projects, yet every typhoon season, the same scenes unfold: submerged barangays, families stranded on rooftops, classrooms turned into evacuation centers.
Data from the International Disaster Database reveal a grim constant: from 2000 to 2024, storms (201) and floods (109) accounted for nearly two-thirds of all recorded disasters far outpacing earthquakes, droughts, or volcanic eruptions.
‘These are not just numbers,’ said Dr. Rogelio Alicor Panao, INQUIRER Metrics data scientist and associate professor at the University of the Philippines. ‘They mean drowned neighborhoods, ruined crops, and billions in damages.’
Despite this, the government’s spending priorities tell a different story: a country obsessed with pouring concrete rather than building resilience.
The concrete fixation
Analysis of PhilGEPS procurement records from 2000 to 2021 shows that construction captured more than half of all government contracts every year, peaking above 70 percent in 2018.
In contrast, procurement for health medicines, hospitals, and medical supplies rarely exceeded 5 percent, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The figures, Panao explained, suggest that while hospitals may be constructed, operational capacity including medicines, supplies, and equipment has remained relatively underfunded.
He added that the imbalance ‘raises fundamental questions about whether procurement is truly advancing citizen welfare or simply generating projects that are politically and visually rewarding.’
In total, government spending on construction projects reached ?4.65 trillion, dwarfing every other category, including information technology (?152 billion), drugs and medicines (?132 billion), and medical supplies (?74 billion).
When ‘climate funds’ become corruption funds
While floods remain the country’s top climate threat, recent data from Greenpeace Philippines suggest that even climate adaptation funding meant to help communities survive has become another venue for graft.
Graphics by Ed Lustan/Inquirer.net
Greenpeace found that up to ?1.089 trillion in climate-tagged expenditures may have been lost to corruption since 2023. In 2025 alone, ?560 billion could have gone missing from the ?800 billion climate-tagged projects handled by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), about 90 percent of all climate funds that year.
‘A trillion pesos is a staggering, absurd amount, siphoned by avaricious, self-serving officials and contractor corporations from projects meant to help people cope with escalating climate impacts,’ said Greenpeace campaigner Jefferson Chua.
‘This is unacceptable. They’re not just plundering government coffers, they’re also crippling the ability of millions of Filipinos to survive in the face of an escalating climate crisis. Theft of climate funds at such a scale is atrocious, and offenders are akin to climate criminals,’ Chua continued.
The group cited the National Integrated Climate Change Database and Information Exchange System (NICCDIES), showing that flood control and drainage works dominate climate-tagged projects 24,764 of 26,874, or 90 percent but with little to show for it on the ground.
‘Ghost projects’ and the flood of plunder
Behind the grand numbers are ghost towns and ghost projects.
In Bulacan, the Commission on Audit (COA) recently filed multiple fraud audit reports uncovering nonexistent or duplicated flood control projects worth over ?700 million. One ‘completed’ project was found to predate its own contract; others were credited to sites where no work was ever done.
Contractors flagged in the audits SYMS Construction Trading, Topnotch Catalyst Builders, Triple 8 Construction, and Wawao Builders were all repeat recipients of multi-million contracts under the same DPWH-Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office.
The state auditors noted that ‘a slope protection structure already existed at the approved location before the contract took effect on February 25, 2025,’ and that ‘no explanation was provided by the DPWH-Bulacan 1st DEO representatives why the location was changed.’
The scheme, COA warned, could result in double-counted accomplishments and false reporting a template for how public funds vanish between the spreadsheet and the street.
Where the money pools and who profits
Between July 2022 and May 2025, ?545.64 billion was poured into nearly 10,000 flood control projects, according to Malacañang’s internal probe. But at least 6,021 of those projects, worth more than ?350 billion, did not specify what kind of structure was even built.
Former Public Works Secretary Rogelio ‘Babes’ Singson said the math alone is suspicious:
‘For flood control, I only spent ?182 billion [in six years]. Look at the 2025 budget ?350 billion for one year. Where did all that go?’
Graphics by Ed Lustan/Inquirer.net
COA’s findings combined with testimonies before the Senate and House hearings suggest where it went: into padded dredging contracts, ghost floodwalls, and pumping stations that exist only on paper.
Former COA commissioner Heidi Mendoza previously explained why dredging has long been a corruption magnet:
‘Those looking to profit schedule dredging when it’s raining it’s nearly impossible to verify the results.’
Climate change, same old crooks
Environmental groups warn that this corruption does more than waste money it worsens climate vulnerability.
Greenpeace noted that the ‘gargantuan budget for climate tagged-projects under the purview of the DPWH shows the government’s shortsighted overreliance on gray infrastructure for climate adaptation.’
The World Bank’s 2022 Climate and Development Report estimated that the Philippines could lose up to 7.6 percent of its GDP by 2030 due to climate change. Yet instead of investing in nature-based, community-led adaptation mangrove rehabilitation, watershed protection, proper land use planning the bulk of funds keep flowing to politically engineered projects.
‘Massive corruption on flood control projects at a time of climate change, worsened by the continued extraction and operation of fossil fuel companies in the name of profit, is piling one injustice over another onto Filipino communities,’ Chua said.
‘Filipinos cannot continue to suffer the double burden of corruption and corporate impunity,’ he added.
Building trust, not just dikes
Experts agree: resilience is not built by pouring concrete but by restoring public trust and ecosystems.
Dr. Panao emphasized that the issue isn’t just infrastructure inefficiency but governance failure.
‘Trillions have already sunk into concrete, yet the waters keep rising,’ he said.
‘Concrete dikes and drainage alone cannot keep pace with a changing climate,’ Panao wrote. ‘Perhaps it is time to move beyond politics and quick fixes. Building resilience is not just about concrete; it is about choices that keep people safe long after the floodwaters recede.’
Greenpeace, meanwhile, called on President Marcos Jr. to pursue legal accountability for both corrupt contractors and climate polluters, institute transparency safeguards, and invest in nature-based solutions.
As the 2025 La Niña season looms, those calls echo the frustrations of communities from Bulacan to Maguindanao who keep asking the same question after every flood:
If trillions have been spent to protect us, why are we still drowning?