The Marcos Jr. administration has tightened the rules governing the government’s big-ticket infrastructure flagship projects (IFPs), a move widely seen as a response to recent corruption controversies involving flood control and other public works projects that dented investor confidence last year.

Under revised guidelines approved by the Economy and Development (ED) Council, chaired by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., in November 2025, the government raised the minimum project cost for flagship inclusion to ₱5 billion from ₱2.5 billion previously. This narrows the list to fewer but higher-impact projects while reducing the risk of project fragmentation and cost padding.

The updated eight-page rules, published on the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development’s (DEPDev) website this week, also mandate disclosure of project locations down to the barangay level—a sharper transparency requirement aimed at making it easier for oversight bodies, civil society, and local communities to track implementation on the ground, an issue that surfaced prominently in the flood-control controversy.

To strengthen accountability, heads of implementing agencies are now explicitly required to endorse projects with full responsibility for the accuracy of submitted data. Agencies that fail to show progress or deprioritize IFPs in their budgets also risk being barred from proposing new flagship projects in succeeding cycles.

Private proponents face tougher sanctions as well, including delisting and possible exclusion from future submissions if they fail to comply with quarterly reporting requirements, reinforcing discipline in public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects.

Monitoring has likewise been tightened through mandatory regular reporting on delays, bottlenecks, and corrective actions, with key information to be disclosed through an IFP dashboard and other public platforms.

The revised framework also formalizes the role of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in providing regular updates on funding allocations, improving the traceability of public spending amid heightened scrutiny over infrastructure disbursements.

While the ED Council’s Committee on Infrastructure (INFRACOM) retains its technical evaluation role, overall oversight now rests with the ED Council, reflecting a governance reset intended to reinforce policy coherence and integrity in infrastructure planning.

Taken together, the stricter rules—replacing the six-page National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Board guidelines put in place in October 2024—signal the current administration’s effort to reassure investors and the public that its flagship projects, central to the “Build Better More” (BBM) agenda, will be delivered with stronger safeguards against corruption and misuse of public funds.

On the sidelines of the Philippine Economic Society’s (PES) 63rd annual meeting and conference in November last year, DEPDev Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan told Manila Bulletin that the new guidelines prevent agencies implementing IFPs from halting project rollouts without approval from the ED Council. Balisacan, the country’s chief economist, disclosed that in the past, some agencies dropped out of big-ticket infrastructure projects without the President’s go-ahead.

In the case of flood-control projects, Balisacan said these should form part of broader river basin water management initiatives rather than piecemeal efforts.

Based on the latest government data on DEPDev’s website, the Marcos Jr. administration’s BBM program includes 209 IFPs worth a total of ₱10.6 trillion.

By sector, 140 IFPs are for physical connectivity, 32 for water resources, nine for agriculture, six for digital connectivity, five for health, three for power and energy, two each for education and housing, and 10 for other infrastructure.

As of last year, nine IFPs have been completed, 77 are under implementation, 30 are approved for implementation, eight are awaiting government action, and 85 are undergoing project preparation or pre-project preparation.

Overall, this administration has in its pipeline a total of 3,224 infrastructure programs, activities, and projects (PAPs) amounting to ₱12.8 trillion.

In a presentation before Japanese investors last September, the economic team said that among the “tangible results to upgrade the country’s infrastructure network” to date are the completion—since July 2022, when Marcos Jr. assumed the presidency—of 42 airports, 2,433 bridges, 28 port projects, 19,629 kilometers of roads, and 9,855 flood-control projects.