Tiangco: House inserted P209-B DPWH projects in 2025 budget
The House of Representatives bumped its allocations for infrastructure projects in the 2025 budget by P209 billion during the bicameral conference committee hearings conducted for the fiscal blueprint, a lawmaker said.
Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, a witness in the ongoing bail hearing of former House Speaker Martin Romualdez, told the Sandiganbayan Third Division that he had received such information from a list that he got from the late Public Works undersecretary Cathy Cabral.
Cabral had reportedly provided him an excel file which contained the amendments that were made by the lower chamber during the bicam. Tiangco stated that also he received a separate list from Quezon 2nd District Rep. David “Jay-jay” Suarez.
During the cross examination of Romualdez’s lawyers, the lawmaker explained that he had consolidated the files in one excel sheet to “make totals of insertions and allocations per congressional district.”
The lists reportedly included the lawmakers that were the proponents of infrastructure projects inserted by the lower chamber for consideration in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Tiangco told the court that he had conducted a test on the lists to identify any “red flags” that were present in the proposals.
There, he said that he found that there were some projects that were mismatched in terms of the congressional district of the listed proponent, a matter that the solon later described as “parking” or “sagasa.”
Tiangco later admitted that being a proponent was not necessarily wrong, for as long as congressmen did not take commitments from the budget that was allocated for the project.
He further stated that being a proponent was something that lawmakers should be “proud” of as they were able to bring needed projects to their respective constituencies.
Romualdez had P27-B in projects
As for Romualdez, Tiangco said that there were a total of P27.4 billion in infrastructure projects based on the lists where the former House Speaker was tagged as a proponent.
The lawmaker noted that he got the amount from the total allocation that was earmarked under the names “Romualdez,” “Speaker,” and “SFMR.”
He would point out, however, that out of the said amount, only over P2 billion had actually gone to Romualdez’s constituents in the 1st District of Leyte.
In a hearing on the case that was conducted on Monday, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Programming Division Chief Engr. Peter Paul Cortez testified that Romualdez had P27.4 billion in infrastructure projects in their database for 2025.
Cortez told the anti-graft court that Romualdez’s indication as a proponent was based on the orders of Cabral, noting that he had no personal knowledge on whether the lawmaker approved the inclusion.
The engineer likewise stated that the projects only came out after the 2025 GAA was released, leading him to assume that the amendments were made through the bicam.