DA: 8 FMR errors, no insertions

The Department of Agriculture (DA) clarified Wednesday that the farm-to-market road (FMR) projects flagged by civil society organizations were not congressional insertions but were already included in the Executive’s proposed 2027 budget.

DA Assistant Secretary U-Nichols Manalo said eight of the 1,669 FMR projects proposed for funding in 2027 were found to have incorrect coordinates.

The errors were identified following consultations with the People’s Budget Coalition after a Senate committee hearing on the DA’s proposed P198.45-billion budget.

Manalo said the discrepancies may have resulted from errors in encoding or geotagging the project sites. He stressed, however, that the eight FMR projects were not among those inserted through amendments by the House of Representatives.

“We’d like to inform the committee that the list or the 1,669 FMR projects are within the NEP (National Expenditure Program). It did not come from what we call as inserted farm-to-market road projects,” he said during a House Committee on Agriculture and Food hearing.

Manalo said the incorrect coordinates could prevent the eight projects from receiving proper funding and being implemented next year.

“The only problem is, since it was already in the NEP, we will be losing those eight farm-to-market road projects because we cannot implement them because of what happened in the encoding,” he said.

Following the discovery, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel ordered a review of all FMR projects to ensure that no other irregularities had gone undetected.