SENATE President Sherwin Gatchalian on Monday sounded the alarm over what he called “red-flag” items in the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) proposed budget for 2027.
Citing an extensive analytical assessment made by his office, Gatchalian emphasized the urgent need to scrutinize funding for government projects to weed out systemic corruption, in view of controversies involving flood control projects.
Out of 11,395 infrastructure projects evaluated under DPWH’s locally funded operations, with budget allocation amounting to P455.17 billion, more than 62 percent, or 7,107 projects, contained at least one major budgetary red flag, Gatchalian said.
Projects with at least one red flag account for 55.3 percent of the DPWH’s total projects with a budget allocation of P251.81 billion, he added.
Gatchalian said the eight categories covered issues involving missing project identifiers, duplicate entries, recurring projects, absent geographical coordinates, lump-sum allocations, overlapping or fragmented projects, unspecified work scopes, and conflicting types of work.
The first red flag involved 2,570 projects worth P83.67 billion that had no station number or bridge ID.
Gatchalian said these identifiers are needed to establish the projects’ locations and facilitate verification.
The review also identified 189 duplicated project entries worth P3.94 billion. Some of the entries reportedly differed only slightly in spelling, raising questions about whether they referred to separate projects.
Another 258 projects worth P20.78 billion appeared in both the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA) and the proposed 2027 DPWH budget. These were classified as recurring projects under the third red flag.
The fourth category covered 3,543 projects worth P83.5 billion that lacked geographical coordinates.
Gatchalian said the absence of coordinates could hamper physical verification and auditing.
The review further identified 347 lump-sum projects worth P14.79 billion that lacked a detailed breakdown of their components.
Meanwhile, 533 projects worth P63.18 billion were classified as overlapping or fragmented.
He said 62 projects worth P1.52 billion allegedly lacked a specific construction work scope, while 20 projects worth P386.25 million involved conflicting types of work, including instances where construction and rehabilitation activities appeared to be assigned to the same location.
Gatchalian said the findings show that further scrutiny is needed before the proposed infrastructure allocations are finalized.
“There have already been many reforms, but many still manage to slip through scrutiny,” Gatchalian said during the budget deliberations.
The DPWH, however, said some of the deficiencies identified in the proposed budget were the result of information being omitted from project titles rather than the absence of supporting data.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon said 6,113 flagged projects had station limits, bridge IDs and geographical coordinates contained in supporting documents submitted by district engineers and regional offices, although these details were not reflected in the National Expenditure Program.
Dizon also said the department would review the flagged projects and address duplicate, overlapping or otherwise problematic entries.
“If there are really some that cannot be explained, if there are such cases, we will immediately file charges against those district engineers,” Dizon said. “Because they signed it. They signed that there was no such issue — no duplicate.”
Gatchalian has said the Senate would turn over the complete list of flagged projects to the DPWH for validation and correction ahead of the preparation of the Senate Finance Committee’s report on the proposed 2027 national budget.
