A Senate finance subpanel deferred the approval of the proposed P625.78-billion budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for 2026 on Monday, Oct. 20.

In a chance interview following the panel's eight-hour deliberation, Gatchalian said that more than P340 billion may potentially be removed from the agency's proposed 2026 funding.

"Kasi yung red flags is already P271 billion tapos yung overpricing na 20 percent across the board [cut] sakali is another P70 billion something eh (Because the red flags already amount to ₱271 billion, and if you include the across-the-board overpricing of about 20 percent, that’s another ₱70 billion or so)," he said.

Senators Loren Legarda and Bam Aquino pressed the agency to implement an across-the-board reduction of 20 to 30 percent on its infrastructure line items, as they cited recent corruption scandals that revealed systemic overpricing of materials and projects.

Gatchalian clarified that this figure was not yet final and was merely a rough estimate so far, pending the submission of the required documents that the agency needs to justify by next Monday.

If this amount gets slashed from the budget, Gatchalian said that a portion of it may be reallocated to the Commission on Audit (COA).

"Ang COA nag-request ng P2.7 billion at nag-volunteer na siya kunin doon. So, yung mga savings na makukuha natin diyan pwedeng ilagay sa COA pre-audit. So, by next year, may COA tayong magpe-pre-audit. So, ibig sabihin, walang mababayaran hanggat hindi na-inspect ng COA yung project (The COA requested ₱2.7 billion and volunteered to take it from there. So, the savings we can get from that can be allocated to COA’s pre-audit. That means by next year, we’ll have COA conducting pre-audits. In other words, no payments will be made until COA has inspected the project)," he said.

The rest of what may be saved from this may also be used to totally remove the unprogrammed funds, except for the foreign-assisted projects (FAPs).

"Yung isa naisip ko sa unprogrammed para maalis yung buong unprogrammed except for FAPs. So lahat ng mga unprogrammed, popondohan na ng savings na makukuha natin dito (One idea I had is to remove all the unprogrammed funds except for the FAPs. So all the unprogrammed items will be funded using the savings we’ll get from this)," he added.