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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider Lacson: Duplicate projects in DPWH's 2025 budget designed to confuse, corrupt

Lacson: Duplicate projects in DPWH's 2025 budget designed to confuse, corrupt

Published Nov 26, 2025 03:45 pm

At A Glance

  • Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo "Ping" Lacson flagged several "duplicate" projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in its corruption-filled 2025 budget, saying these could have been designed to "confuse and corrupt."


Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Tuesday evening flagged several “duplicate” projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in its corruption-filled 2025 budget, saying these could have been designed to “confuse and corrupt.”

During the Senate deliberation on the DPWH's budget for 2026, Lacson noted these duplicates were under the Convergence and Special Support Program (CSSP), which were “significantly bloated every year” from 2023 to 2025.

“Why is the CSSP bloated every year? And the increases are significant),” Lacson pointed out on Tuesday evening, November 25.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who sponsored the DPWH budget, replied that these increases are “mostly congressional.”

In his interpellation, Lacson noted that the DPWH's CSSP budget in 2024 showed it had an allotment of P174.088-billion in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) for 2024, but this ballooned to P410.91-billion in the 2024 General Appropriations Act—a 136.08% increase.

For 2025, the CSSP budget ballooned from P221.499-billion in the NEP to P504.226-billion in the GAA—a 127.61% increase.

For 2026, the CSSP had P167.79-billion in the NEP and P234.236-billion in the House version of the budget bill - a 39.6% increase.

Moreover, Lacson said he found out that under the CSSP's budget, a lot of the projects under the Sustainable Infra Projects Alleviating Gaps (SIPAG) had the same names as those under the Basic Infrastructure programs (BIP), although with different amounts.

He noted that for 2026, SIPAG had P69.725-billion in the NEP for 2026, and this increased to P111.03-billion in the House version of the budget bill. In the Senate, it had a P110.649-billion allocation.

On the other hand, the BIP had P60.38-billion in the NEP for 2026, an amount that went up to P90.996-billion in the House version, and went down to P88.905-billion in the Senate version.

“We need to take a closer look at these because we may be giving double appropriations—different programs but the same projects,” Lacson warned.

Lacson noted that among the projects that had “duplicate” allocations in the 2025 budget included the following:

1. Construction of Brgy. San Jose-Brgy. Bandi Road Package 2 in Brgy. San Jose-Brgy. Bandi, Donsol, Sorsogon, with P39.433 million under SIPAG and P150 million under BIP;
2. Road rehabilitation, Phases 1 and 2, in Umingan, Pangasinan (P125 million and P200 million respectively) under SIPAG, and Phase 3 of "construction/rehabilitation" of roads in Umingan (P17 million) under BIP;
3. Construction of a road at Brgy. Guisican, Phase II, in Labo, Camarines Norte (P30 million) under SIPAG and Phase I of a similarly named project (P100 million) under BIP; and
4. Rehabilitation of road, Phase 1 from Brgy. Naspi to Brgy. Abucay, Pilar, Sorsogon (P100 million) under SIPAG, and construction of Naspi-Abucay Road in Pilar, Sorsogon, Phase 2 (P50 million) under BIP.

“I hope this can be rectified. I can go on and on because we saw so many projects. I hope Sec. Dizon will look at the project titles especially those that are exactly the same or divided into phases but placed under different programs,” Lacson said.

Gatchalian pointed out that in the case of projects with the same title and without technical description, the district engineer may have discretion of how and where to implement the projects. But starting next year, he said the DPWH will collapse the two programs for the 2027 budget.

Lacson, however, maintained that this must be implemented immediately to avoid fund wastage.

Related Tags

Ping Lacson 2026 budget DPWH flood control
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