The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has yet to develop a consolidated national flood mitigation plan, opting to create master plans on a per river and river basin basis.

Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon confirmed the lack of a nationwide blueprint for the department Wednesday as part of the legislative inquiry into the agency’s proposed national budget for 2027 on Wednesday.

He said that the lack of an overall framework was based on the suggestion of their foreign partners that assist in the development of infrastructure projects.

“This was supposedly the recommendation of our foreign partners, to do it major river basins and also on a per urban center basis, especially for drainage masterplan…there really is no national flood mitigation masterplan,” Dizon said.

The issue was raised by Akbayan Partylist Rep. Chel Diokno, noting that he had brought up the concept of a comprehensive national flood control and drainage plan during the previous budget deliberations.

Diokno questioned whether the executive branch of government was simply “abandoning the idea,” stressing the importance of general principles that would be applied for all projects.

“How can we develop rationally in the coming five, 10 or 15 years without this kind of comprehensive approach?” he asked.

For Dizon, the decision was not necessarily an abandonment of such a scheme given the fact that they were simply relying on the suggestion of experts on the “best strategic approach” to flood mitigation.

Similar to his initial presentation on their budget, the official maintained that they were constructing projects based on the needs of communities.

“I think there are general principles that are applicable nationwide, however, the specific interventions according to the experts, as they were explaining it to me, need to be on a per river basin, major river basin and per locality level,” Dizon said.

Out of the 18 major river basins in the country, the public works secretary said that 14 master plans were being updated because the documents were outdated–pushing for completion of the same by 2027.

On the part of Congress, Dizon urged lawmakers to include flood mitigation in the proposed Master Plan on Infrastructure and National Development (MIND) law.

“That is critical because, like you said, we need a plan. And unfortunately, when we saw the plan it was fragmented. I think the MIND bill is definitely, I hope, that can pass,” he said.

After being excluded from the national budget of 2026, flood mitigation–previously labeled as flood control–was allocated a budget of P107 billion from the DPWH’s total proposed budget of P625.78 billion.