DBM, DPWH ‘complicity’ in budget mess slammed

A leader of the House of Representatives on Monday stopped short of proposing the abolition of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), accusing it of negligence for not vetting redundant allocations for flood control projects in the controversy-plagued 2026 budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

Deputy Speaker Ronaldo Puno said he was not convinced that the DBM, headed by Secretary Amenah F. Pangandaman, had no knowledge of the projects in question, given that it was the agency that reviewed the proposed budget of each department before submitting the National Expenditure Program (NEP) to Congress.

The NEP is the President’s proposed budget that is submitted by the DBM to Congress for its approval. It serves as the basis for the national budget bill, which becomes the General Appropriations Act when signed by the President.

“You mean to say they can’t decide on their own to scrutinize something as obviously questionable as this? What are they? Stenographers?” Puno said in Filipino in an interview.

“If they won’t review [the NEP] when it reaches their office, then what’s the point of passing it through them? It might as well go straight to Congress. They were like summing up the total like stenographers,” he added.

The House leader first raised the issue of redundant allocations last Friday, claiming the NEP contained budget items for flood control projects that had already been completed.

In Rep. Marcy Teodoro’s district in Marikina City, Puno claimed the flood control projects had all been completed but they still got an allocation in the NEP under the DPWH.

Meanwhile, the budget item for the Pasig-Marikina River Channel Improvement Project Phase IV, that was recently inspected by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., had a zero allocation despite the construction still ongoing, Puno noted.

In his district in Antipolo City, Puno said flood control projects in the barangays of Mayamot, Muntindilaw and Mambugan also received zero allocations despite being priority projects and still having continuing appropriations.

Further, he flagged a certain project with a price tag of P100 million that suddenly appeared in the NEP, replacing the original line item intended for the Mayamot National High School, which is prone to flooding.

Culpable

Puno strongly suggested that the DBM is equally culpable for such blunders alongside the DPWH, suggesting that the agency may be complicit with the DPWH, which has been embroiled in allegations of corruption involving the multibillion-peso flood control projects.

“For me, even [DBM] should be reviewed because there’s no way all of this could happen without anyone knowing about it. They are responsible for releasing the budget,” Puno averred.

Last week, the lawmaker claimed that even his partymates in the National Unity Party raised similar concerns about the questionable flood control budgets in their respective districts, questioning how the DBM failed to take notice of the supposed irregular patterns in the budget.

This includes uniform amounts for several projects at P73 million to P93 million each, all outlined on a single page in the NEP.

‘Dubious NEP items’

Many lawmakers, like Rep. Terry Ridon, have insisted that funding for some questionable projects, including flood mitigation, emanated from the NEP submitted by the DBM and were not “inserted” by Congress.

Puno also revealed that House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos approached him about the dubious funding for flood control projects in the first district of Ilocos Norte — the bailiwick of the Marcoses.

In a separate interview Monday, Deputy Speaker Janette Garin also flagged “dubious” items in the NEP, implying that such “insertions” may have been done behind the scenes, or prior to the DBM’s submission of the NEP to Congress.

The DBM submitted the NEP, outlining the P6.793-trillion proposed budget for 2026, to the House on 13 August.

Despite the allegations of anomalies, the DPWH remains the second agency to receive the lion’s share of next year’s budget with P881.3 billion, next to the education sector with P1.224 trillion.

Senator Ping Lacson has proposed that Congress adopt the NEP to avoid the recurrence of congressional insertions and realignments linked to the highly controversial 2025 national budget.

By doing so, any problems that may arise will be attributed solely to the executive branch.

Lacson has raised suspicions that his colleagues in the Senate are also likely involved in illegal insertions in this year’s budget.

He had flagged the duplication of projects worth P147.283 billion in the DPWH’s proposed budget for 2022 as early as 2021.

67 House ‘funders’

Recently, the senator claimed that 67 House members in the previous Congress had complete control over the flood control project funds because either they or their relatives were the contractors for the government’s flood mitigation program.

In his fourth State of the Nation Address in late July, President Marcos warned members of Congress he would not approve a proposed budget that deviates from the NEP, regardless of whether it results in a reenacted budget.