After allocating no funds for flood control in the current national budget, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said Tuesday that P107.4 billion in the proposed 2027 national budget has been earmarked for flood-control projects.

Budget Acting Secretary Robert Kim de Leon said one consideration in restoring flood-control funding was the severe flooding the country recently experienced because of heavy rainfall. He said the government needed to finish structures that had been left unattended.

De Leon said the funding would not only cover new infrastructure but also the maintenance, repair and improvement of existing flood-mitigation systems because flood control was not a “one-off expenditure.”

“These were the reasons why we agreed with some proposals from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for their existing flood-control projects that must be continued, finished, and fixed so that the public can realize its actual intended benefit,” he said.

The 2026 national budget contained no allocation for flood-control projects amid a multibillion-peso corruption scandal linking several lawmakers to alleged kickbacks from insertions into the DPWH budget.

To prevent a recurrence, De Leon said the DBM and DPWH had undergone a rigorous vetting process in which proposed projects were properly tagged, located and supported by documents.

He also said the DBM would be involved in verifying whether the projects were properly implemented, with regular updates to be published online.

“We will no longer rely on documentary reports concerning the project’s accomplishment; we will also be utilizing technology, satellite data to verify if the reported structures really exist,” he said.

Based on the National Expenditure Program submitted to the House of Representatives, the DPWH ranked second among national departments in terms of funding, with P644 billion.

Aside from flood control, P195 billion was allocated to the administration’s Railway Transport Program, while Network Development and Basic Infrastructure programs received P176.6 billion and P148.5 billion, respectively.