DEPARTMENT of Public Works and Highways Secretary Vince Dizon vowed on Thursday, December 18, 2025, the proper implementation of the agency’s projects and programs despite the deduction from its proposed 2026 budget.
“Okay lang ‘yon kasi naniniwala ako, naniniwala ang Pangulo, at naniniwala din ang Kongreso na ang importante sa budget ay malinis siya at ma-implement siya nang tama,” Dizon said in a press conference.
(That’s okay because I believe, the President believes, and Congress also believes that what’s important about the budget is that it is clean and implemented properly.)
“Ang budget per se ay hindi masama. Ang masama kapag ang mga proyekto sa budget ginawang ghost, ginawang substandard, pinagkakitaan lang, ‘yun ang masama,” he added.
(The budget in itself is not bad. What is bad is when the projects in the budget are turned into ghost projects, made substandard, or used merely for personal gain.)
Following an intensive deliberation on the 2026 proposed national budget, the bicameral conference committee approved P529.6 billion budget for the DPWH.
The amount was lower than the Senate-approved P570.48 billion, as well as the House of Representatives’ General Appropriations Bill version of P624.48 billion.
In the 2026 National Expenditures Program, the DPWH requested for P881,312,559,000 budget for the upcoming year.
It was, however, reduced after the removal of locally funded flood control projects amid the investigation on anomalous flood control projects.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, said the P20.7 billion savings were a result of the application of the Construction Materials Price Data (CMPD), which was provided by Dizon on around 10,000 projects.
Of the total savings, P16.52 billion was realigned to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), while P4.25 billion was transferred to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund.
The DPWH earlier sought for the restoration of the deducted amounts from its proposed 2026 budget due to the restorations in the CMPD.
CMPD is an official, regularly updated price list for various construction materials like aggregates, cement, asphalt published by the DPWH to standardize costs for government infrastructure projects, ensuring transparency and efficiency, with data collected from different regions and suppliers.
In October, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered all government agencies, not just the DPWH, to cut down project costs by at least 50 percent to make no room for overpricing and corruption. (TPM/SunStar Philippines)