Among the biggest chunks of the P194 billion President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. deleted from the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) through his veto power were P16.7 billion worth of flood control projects in various regions nationwide.

The items were vetoed along with the signing of the P6.326 trillion national budget before the end of last year.

As the weather becomes unpredictable since it doesn’t take a typhoon but the usual monsoon rains to submerge the whole of Metro Manila, flood mitigation should be an essential part of the yearly budget.

Legislators, cunning in their ways to fill their pockets with public money, have exploited the need for such projects to obtain kickbacks.

Based on the study of a budget watchdog, since 2015, P1.14 trillion has been allotted for flood control, with 48 percent of it in the past three years.

Institute for Leadership, Empowerment, & Democracy (ILEAD) executive director Zy-za Nadine Suzara said “patronage politics” was heavily involved in such projects.

Flood control contracts were often last-minute insertions by legislators into the national spending plan, Suzara’s research showed.

Designs and methods to address floods were rarely discussed but “suddenly a huge amount of the flood control projects are added during the last week of budget legislation,” she pointed out.

In the 2025 budget submitted to the President, Congress earmarked P779.38 billion for Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) flood control efforts in 2025, or about 12 percent of the proposed GAA.

Flood control projects are the easiest route to kickbacks due to the absence of mechanisms for external monitoring and are almost free from scrutiny when included in the budget since most are inserted in the 11th hour.

Thus, Suzara described the flood control projects as they are currently structured as a “waste of fiscal space.”

“These funds could have been used for something with much better planning for climate change adaptation,” she said.

For 2025, the budget included P1.01 trillion as “green spending,” for Climate Change Expenditures, an increase of 84 percent from 2024.

It included a sizable lump sum, which can be used based on the discretion of the President.

Mr. Marcos has been particularly humiliated by the preponderance of the inefficient anti-flood programs.

The Chief Executive then acknowledged the taint of corruption and asked legislators to look into the issue.

Days after hailing the Department of Public Works and Highways and local governments for completing more than 5,500 flood control projects in his third State of the Nation Address, many parts of Metro Manila and surrounding provinces were inundated at the height of typhoon “Carina” and the downpour from the southwest monsoon.

Senator Imee Marcos also took notice of the P132 billion allocated since 2018 for flood control in Bicol which continues to suffer severe flooding.

Based on the 2024 General Appropriations Act, Bicol received P31.94 billion for such projects. Of the amount, Senator Marcos said more than P86.6 billion was allocated in just the past two years.

The President has identified the solution as a flood control master plan, rather than the unstructured community projects that are often used as sources of pork barrel funds.

“Water doesn’t recognize boundaries. That’s why flood control has to be a big plan,” Marcos said.

The need for a comprehensive program that incorporates input from all agencies involved in addressing the impacts of rapid climate changes has long been acknowledged.

The problem, however, lies in legislators’ unwillingness to relinquish control over patronage projects and the associated kickbacks.