Senator Sherwin Gatchalian questioned on Monday, Oct. 20, several "red flags" that he found among the revised projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) under its proposed 2026 budget.

Gatchalian, chaiman of the Senate Committee on Finance, disclosed his findings during the deliberations of DPWH's proposed P625.78 billion 2026 budget.

He first pointed out 4,566 projects with no station numbers worth P201 billion.

"So hindi namin alam gano kahaba 'to, di rin namin alam nasan itong mga lugar na ito (So we don’t know how long this is, and we also don’t know where these are located)," Gatchalian said.

He said they were told that station numbers were only provided to the national roads. But he showed one of the projects--the construction of an access road going to Anao TPLEX, Tarlac, worth P300 million--which he said was no longer a local road since it's an access road to a highway.

According to him, if they're after transparency, even though it's a local road, there should be a station number and coordinates since they can't figure out the total length of the project.

The second red flag he revealed was duplicated projects, but Gatchalian said that it was already significantly reduced to just 40 items from thousands, and was worth P1.099 billion. One of the projects he questioned was the construction and rehabilitation of a multi-purpose building in the same year.

"So nagconstruct siya tapos in the same year magrerehabilitate siya ng the same building. Parang katawa-tawa naman ho to (So they constructed it, and in the same year they’re going to rehabilitate the same building. That seems quite ridiculous)," Gatchalian said.

For the third red flag, Gatchalian questioned 42 projects split into multiple phases worth P2.6 billion.

Lastly, Gatchalian pointed out that 946 reappearing projects in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) were currently present again in the 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP), worth more than P14 billion.

In total, Gatchalian said that these projects amounted to P271 billion, which accounted for 48 percent of the agency's budget.

Dizon addressed the red flags one by one.

For the first one, he said that this needs validation, and that station numbers must be put in place. Next, he said that the remaining duplicate projects must be removed, as well as the projects with multiple phases.

For the fourth red flag, Dizon said that the project must have reappeared because it's still not finished, and subject to validation. It must also be indicated what should be completed in the specific project.

Based on Gatchalian's presentation, the project in the 2025 GAA and in the 2026 NEP have the same exact names.

"I think we have time to work on this, but I think this requires field validation," Dizon said.

When he first saw the findings, Gatchalian said that his first instinct was to defer the agency's budget to address these projects.

"But kanina narinig ko rin sinabi niyo na you will let Congress decide. So ang desisyon namin pwedeng tanggalin lahat yung mga doble-doble and then ang pwedeng matipid natin dito P271 billion out of your P600 billion that's one-third (But earlier I also heard you say that you will let Congress decide. So our decision could be to remove all the duplications, and by doing that, we could save ₱271 billion out of your ₱600 billion, that’s one-third)," he added.

He told Dizon to submit the technical description of all 4,566 projects for the first red flag, as well as for the fourth red flag, if there are any, by Monday next week. If there are none, Gatchalian said that they will just remove it. For the second and third red flags, they will remove all duplicates.

Gatchalian said the findings were uncovered through the help of accounting interns from the Pamantasan ng Lungod ng Valenzuela.