The Department of Agriculture (DA) is putting farm-to-market road (FMR) projects under public scrutiny with its new “FMR Watch” platform, to expose inefficiencies and corruption that have long drained rural infrastructure budgets and left farmers shortchanged.
“We will do a number of things, like the FMR Watch website, wherein our netizens or ordinary citizens or local government officials could help monitor projects and upload photos to that website so we at the DA could track their progress, or lack thereof,” Agriculture Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel Jr. said.
“We will also build a portal where they can see the exact location of the road projects so they can easily go there and inspect the FMR. We need everyone’s help to monitor all of these FMR projects in order to do them properly at the fastest possible time,” he added.
By next year, the DA will take over FMR development from the Department of Public Works and Highways, which is under fire for corruption linked to hundreds of billions of pesos in substandard or incomplete flood-control works.
The DA estimates the country requires about 131,000 kilometers of FMRs, but more than 60,000 kilometers remain unbuilt—a backlog that, at current funding levels, could take decades to complete.
The agency is also auditing roughly 5,000 kilometers of FMRs finished in recent years to ensure they meet technical standards.
To further transparency, the DA has submitted to the Senate a detailed list of FMR projects with map coordinates for inclusion in the 2026 General Appropriations Act.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, welcomed the move, describing its inclusion in the budget law as “the standard” for transparency.
The Senate has approved the DA’s proposed P184.1-billion budget next year, matching the appropriation earlier passed by the House of Representatives.