FOLLOWING the expose on a P4.4-million luxury electric vehicle (EV), another questionable transaction has emerged in Cebu City: T-shirts allegedly priced at P20,000 each.
Mayor Nestor Archival has directly linked the City’s growing financial woes — a projected P2 to P3 billion budget deficit — to alleged overpriced and irregular transactions under the previous administration. This includes the attempted acquisition of a P3.3-million luxury SUV that was purportedly priced at P4.4 million.
“If you buy something and you overprice it, that becomes one of the reasons why our deficit keeps growing — because it’s a waste of money,” Archival said in an interview with reporters during a pilot waste segregation activity in Barangay Luz on Saturday, July 5, 2025.
He described the spending as “wasteful” and “irregular,” asserting that it has paralyzed the City’s financial capacity, even impacting the payment of salaries. He added that the sheer volume of questionable spending, if left unchecked, could explain the City’s ballooning deficit.
“So, if there are so many transactions like this, that’s one of the reasons why we have such a large deficit,” he stressed.
Archival revealed that while the P4.4-million electric SUV remains the most glaring red flag, his team has received preliminary reports pointing to other irregularities, such as T-shirts allegedly purchased at P20,000 each.
“This one is the biggest [so far], but there’s some information that a single T-shirt cost P20,000,” Archival said, noting that many reports are still being verified. “Because there are so many [reports], we really can’t look into everything right away. But rest assured, we’re reviewing them one by one.”
SunStar Cebu tried to contact Garcia but to no avail.
The alleged canceled SUV purchase was earlier flagged by former mayor now-Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
In a report from SunStar Cebu on Thursday, July 3, former mayor Raymond Garcia denied claims of extravagant spending, stating that the transaction flagged by Osmeña was canceled and never paid for by the City Government. He added that while his office endorsed the proposal, they first sought legal guidance from the City Legal Office.
Meanwhile, Archival confirmed that he had already heard about the vehicle but had not accessed the documents before Osmeña publicly raised it in a Facebook post on Thursday.
“Good that Tommy was able to get that. In fact, I already knew about it, but I wasn’t able to get the documents right away,” Archival said.
He warned that tolerating such transactions could encourage a culture of excess within government offices.
“The moment you are going to let this pass, the others will just follow. ‘It’s okay to do such a thing,’ they might think. So this is something not good for the City,” he added.
In a separate statement, Vice Mayor Osmeña posted on Facebook that Archival had uncovered an order for T-shirts costing P20,000 each.
“The deficit is now at P3 billion and still counting. Many documents still missing. However, Mayor Nestor Archival has discovered an order for T-shirts costing P20,000 each,” a portion of his post read.
Asked to respond to Garcia’s earlier assertion that the City had sound finances, Archival maintained that current conditions say otherwise.
“I respect what he said, perhaps he was looking at something else… but right now, it’s different. What’s in the bank is very little. And if you compare it to salaries and debts, it’s negative by a billion,” he said.
In a report from SunStar Cebu on Thursday, Garcia refuted Archival’s claim that City Hall is facing a P2 to P3 billion budget deficit, calling it an “inaccurate” statement. He asserted that he left the City financially stable, with double-digit billions in bank deposits, and challenged the new administration to present concrete figures. / CDF