BBB versus BBM: Same blueprint, new scandals
The more damning parallel is corruption, and here scale and transparency separate the two administrations.
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The more damning parallel is corruption, and here scale and transparency separate the two administrations.
Rodrigo Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. share more in infrastructure policy than either camp would probably like to admit.
Marcos’ “Build Better More” is, by his own budget documents, an explicit continuation of Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build,” and the numbers show real continuity in ambition, if not always in delivery.
Measurable and substantial
On spending, Duterte’s record is measurable and substantial. Infrastructure spending averaged 6.0 percent of GDP from 2017 to 2019, worth about P932 billion annually, a sharp jump from the 3 percent of GDP the country spent from 2011 to 2016.
By 2021, infrastructure spending as a share of GDP had reached 5.1 percent, up from 3.9 percent when Duterte took office, with spending nearly doubling from P590.5 billion in 2016 to P1.019 trillion.
Over his full term, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), under Mark Villar, completed some 29,264 kilometers of roads, 5,950 bridges, 11,340 flood control projects, 222 evacuation centers and more than 150,000 classrooms.
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Centerpieces lagged badly
But the flagship “Golden Age” centerpieces lagged badly: Only 12 of more than 100 flagship infrastructure projects had been completed as of May 2021, a fraction of what had been promised under a P4.7-trillion pipeline.
Marcos has, so far, kept spending at a similar or slightly higher level. Infrastructure expenditure reached P1.278 trillion in 2022 and a projected P1.424 trillion in 2023, both around 5.8 percent of GDP.
Actual spending reached P1.5 trillion in 2024, and the 2026 program is budgeted at P1.556 trillion, equivalent to 5.1 percent of GDP, with disbursements projected to climb to P1.692 trillion in 2027.
The DPWH reported roughly 70 percent of about 21,000 projects completed in 2024, a higher completion rate than Duterte’s at a similar point, although the comparison is complicated by how each administration classifies and counts projects.
Corruption woes
The more damning parallel is corruption, and here scale and transparency separate the two administrations. Under Duterte, the problem was chronic but largely diffuse — acknowledged by the president himself rather than exposed by outside investigators.
Duterte openly complained on live television that corruption was pervasive in the DPWH, particularly in road right-of-way deals, and said no construction project started without an illegal payoff.
He said the problem persisted lower down the chain even after clearing his own DPWH secretary of personal wrongdoing.
An early warning
The Commission on Audit’s 2017 report on the program found that “Build, Build, Build” had received more than P662.69 billion in funding but used only a third of the obligated amount, with more than P73 billion in projects delayed or never implemented — an early warning of the ghost-project pattern that would later engulf the Marcos administration.
Marcos’ corruption problem detonated in public view on a scale Duterte’s DPWH scandals never approached.
What began as a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee inquiry into flood control anomalies in August 2025 exposed what investigators described as a systemic kickback network.
Contractor couple Sarah and Curlee Discaya alone secured 345 projects worth P25.2 billion between 2022 and 2025 through nine interlocking companies that sometimes bid against one another.
The DPWH’s own review found at least 421 of 8,000 inspected flood control projects were “ghost” projects, prompting Sen. Panfilo Lacson to describe the scale of corruption as nearly total.
The fallout reached the highest levels of government: DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan resigned, the Senate presidency changed hands from Francis Escudero to Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, and the Bureau of Customs raided the Discayas’ compound.
Senators implicated
Testimony has since implicated sitting senators, including allegations that Escudero received kickbacks tied to Valenzuela and Marinduque flood control projects worth P800 million, and that Sen. Grace Poe received a cut of as much as 20 percent.
Former Partylist Rep. Zaldy Co had his passport canceled by the Sandiganbayan as authorities sought his repatriation from Portugal. Marcos responded by creating the Independent Commission for Infrastructure to investigate the alleged losses.
The honest comparison, then, is not between a clean administration and a dirty one, but between two administrations that inherited corruption and either perpetuated it or failed to cleanse the same DPWH culture of ghost projects, contractor collusion and political kickbacks, with Marcos’ version simply erupting into full public view while Duterte’s remained largely confined to presidential complaints and a CoA report.
On raw spending and completion rates, Marcos currently compares favorably on paper. How the final picture looks at the end of his term remains to be seen.
On accountability, both administrations demonstrate the same institutional failure: an agency structurally captured by the political families and contractors meant to be building the country rather than looting it.
