The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has purged ‘duplicate projects’ under its proposed budget for 2027, bringing the number down to just over 11,000 from the typical average of 20,000, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon said on Wednesday.
The reduction was the result of a ‘strict project evaluation system’ that was implemented in reviewing infrastructure spending for next year, reforms that Dizon said were necessary to prevent a repeat of last year’s multibillion-peso flood control corruption scandal.
‘This is not a perfect budget, but we are trying our best to fix the problems we have seen in the past,’ he told reporters on the sidelines of the hearing on the proposed P643.95-billion DPWH budget for next year. The amount represents a 21.59-percent increase from this year’s P529.59 billion.
The DPWH spending plan includes P107.4 billion for flood control projects, now a magnet of criticism whenever flash floods cause widespread disruptions despite the heavy allocations.
Geo-tagging
‘We will not go back to the old ways,’ Dizon said. ‘Every project that enters here must have a plan.’
In his presentation, he noted the reduction in infrastructure projects over a five-year period from 22,836 in 2023; 25,545 in 2024; 25,301 in 2025; 17,861 in 2026; to 11,395 proposed for 2027.
‘We really worked hard to bring down the number of projects,’ Dizon said.
Aside from eliminating duplicate or overlapping projects, the DPWH focused on prioritizing big-ticket projects and followed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s directive to remove those worth below P5 million under the Big Infrastructure Program.
Dizon also said projects must meet stringent documentation requirements and be backed with validated geo-tagged photos, signed off by district engineers and their regional directors, and endorsed by regional and local development councils.
‘The project engineers … need to go on-site and photograph the site with the coordinates attached automatically to the photos,’ he said.
‘We want to tell everyone, especially those working in the DPWH, that if they deceive us, they will suffer the same consequences as those who are in jail. We need our fellow citizens to report to us. We cannot solve this on our own,’ Dizon said.
No ‘leadership fund’
Several public works officials from Mimaropa (Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, and Palawan) and Bulacan district offices have been detained and put on trial for graft, malversation of public funds and unexplained wealth, among other charges.
Dizon also clarified that there is no ‘leadership fund’ hidden within budget, stressing that allotments are based on needs and whether they complied with project requirements.
Former Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan, who is facing graft and plunder charges, described the ‘leadership fund’ as allocations within the national budget intended to fund senators’ pet projects under the agency.
The DPWH has also scrapped the ‘parametric formula’ that dictated how allocations to each engineering office were set.
Fair distribution
‘We simplified the allocations to be based on three core components,’ Dizon said, referring to the president’s marching order to prioritize pending projects, repair damaged structures and address basic infrastructure needs of communities.
Proposed public works should also have no right-of-way issues to ensure construction, he said, noting that ‘many projects were rendered unimplementable’ due to a lack of funding for easement conflicts.
The DPWH also sought to make next year’s infrastructure spending fairly distributed nationwide after past budgets were deemed biased toward Luzon, according to Dizon.
He said the DPWH is moving toward making infrastructure allotments ‘more needs-based’ after observing that more than half of the budget in the past decade had been allocated to Luzon.
‘But this is a process that will require several years of correcting,’ Dizon said.
Luzon received an average of 56 percent of the agency’s budgets over the past decade, a DPWH presentation showed, with Visayas getting 17 percent and Mindanao 27 percent.
In its spending plan for next year, Luzon’s share was cut to 52.65 percent, Visayas went up to 19.8 percent, while Mindanao took 27.55 percent
Dizon said his agency would work to ensure the public works budget is ‘more equitable for the regions that need it most,’ referring to Bicol, Eastern Visayas, Zamboanga and Caraga regions, which he described were some of the areas ‘with the highest poverty incidences.’