DESPITE the budget cut on foreign-assisted projects (FAPs), the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) gave assurances that there will be no delay in their implementation.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon said that the DPWH has substantial savings that it can use to offset the budget cut for FAPs in the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Added to that is the estimated P60 billion in savings this year from the 50 percent cut in the cost of construction materials for all government projects.
Dizon said the prices of construction materials for government projects are overpriced by as much as 50 percent, which, he pointed out, is what the DPWH is getting back as part of the effort to stop corruption.
“Good thing is in the past years disbursement and utilization of the DPWH [FAP] budget has not been great; it’s low. Because of that we have a lot of savings from 2025, and [for 2026] savings from the reduction in the cost of projects because of the revised cost of materials,” he said.
Dizon assured the government’s three major lenders — the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the World Bank (WB) — that there will be no delay in the implementation of FAPs.
“Based on our savings in previous years and 2026, we have a substantial amount of funds to ensure that there will be no delay in projects under the foreign-assisted program. No projects will suffer,” he stressed.
Under the 2026 national budget, funding for FAPs under the DPWH was only allotted P17.7 billion, down 52.3 billion from the original proposal of P70 billion.
The Commission on Audit (COA), in its December 2025 report, flagged the DPWH for its failure to implement several local and foreign-assisted projects.
“DPWH was not able to efficiently implement 3,047 locally funded projects with an aggregate cost of P131,569,418,441.24 due to inadequate planning, detailed engineering, supervision, and monitoring, which resulted in delayed completion and non-implementation of various projects,” the COA report said.
In the same report, the COA also said that the “DPWH was not able to efficiently implement 17 Foreign-Assisted Projects with an aggregate cost of P84,411,319,510.12.”
Among the delayed FAPs were the Cebu-Mactan Bridge and the Coastal Road Construction Project, which received P1.49 billion, including roughly P501 million from loan proceeds, and the Pasig-Marikina River Channel Improvement Project, with P1.82 billion in programmed funds, of which P1.26 billion comes from loan proceeds.
These projects were started by former DPWH secretary Manuel Bonoan.
Dizon took over as DPWH chief on Sept. 3, 2025, following the resignation of Bonoan because of the flood control scandal.
