Hang ‘chop-chop’ gang members

Hang ‘chop-chop’ gang members | Daily Tribune

A Congress vigilante who is against the yearly ritual rape of the national budget discovered the epic manipulation of foreign-funded big-ticket flood control projects that were replaced with pork barrel-oriented versions pushed by legislators.

Davao City Rep. Sid Ungab, who once chaired the House appropriations panel, said there exists in Congress a “chop-chop” gang, similar to the notorious car thieves who cut up high-end vehicles to sell the parts.

The syndicate, presumably senators and representatives with the authority to reallocate funds in the budget, had removed the vital counterpart funds for Official Development Assistance (ODA) projects.

In their place, “like mushrooms, small projects started appearing,” Ungab said in his interpellation during the hearing on the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

To unlock ODA funds for flagship projects, the government is required to raise local counterpart financing, a requirement that ensures the recipient country or organization has a stake in the project.

By putting up its own resources, the government is expected to ensure the project’s success and align it with national or local development goals.

Members of the bicameral conference committee, where the dicing up of the development projects to pave the way for the pet infrastructure of legislators happens, however, have other ideas.

Delay means commitment costs that run into billions of pesos for the foreign-assisted projects. The bigger the projects, the bigger the penalties incurred.

Ungab said the projects affected by the juggling of funds in the 2024 and 2025 budgets were “really big” and were funded by the Japan Development Bank, World Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Korea Economic Cooperation and Development Fund and the government of China.

In other words, the ODA-funded projects were chopped into small local projects. So who are the members of the chop-chop gang?

DPWH Undersecretary Emil K. Sadain, who oversees the flagship projects, admitted to Ungab during questioning that the ODA projects had experienced delays.

In 2024, “we received a zero budget from the GAA. Some funds did arrive, but these were actually from the unprogrammed budget. Meaning, they were not a priority in budgeting, and the unprogrammed funds normally come out only in the third or fourth quarter,” Sidain explained.

In the 2024 National Expenditure Program (NEP), the ODA amounted to P21.6 billion. When it got to the first version of the General Appropriations Bill, the projects were still intact.

By the third reading in the House, P5.4 billion had been cut. “The final version, the product of both the Senate and the House, wiped out the entire ODA, despite our commitment to our foreign creditors,” Ungab lamented.

He said the same thing happened with the 2025 budget, where P8.9 billion was left for ODA-funded projects.

The Senate then added back P300 million, bringing the ODA counterpart fund to P9.2 billion, which resulted in the reduction by 67 percent of big-ticket flood control projects, according to Ungab.

“And when we say big-ticket, these are the major ones, like the super highways of flood control,” which President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been looking for, Ungab said.

These projects, designed to eliminate floods systematically, receive affordable loans; unlike the money-for-nothing structures of the legislators’ pet contractors.

The senators and congressmen must return the money they stole, so the government can allocate it to the ODA flood projects, in addition to its commitment to the New Bilibid Prison.

The country lags behind the rest of Asia — where stealing public funds is often a ticket to a hanging or the front of a firing squad — in curbing corruption.