Senate President Sherwin T. Gatchalian said more than 7,000 infrastructure projects under the Department of Public Works and Highways' (DPWH) proposed 2027 budget carry at least one potential irregularity.

In a statement on Monday, Mr. Gatchalian said 7,107 of the 11,395 locally funded infrastructure projects were flagged for issues ranging from missing location data and duplicate entries to overlapping projects and conflicting scopes of work, with a combined allocation of about P455 billion. He first presented his office's analysis during the DPWH budget hearing on Sept. 25, part of Congress's annual review of the national spending plan, and reiterated the findings in the statement. The DPWH is the government's main engineering agency, responsible for building and maintaining the country's roads, bridges, and flood control systems, which places its yearly allocation at the center of the infrastructure program.

The flagged items fall into several categories. A total of 2,570 projects worth P83.67 billion lacked station numbers or bridge identification numbers, the reference markers used to establish exactly where road and bridge work is to be performed. The proposed budget also listed 189 duplicate items worth P3.94 billion that differed slightly in spelling, while 258 projects worth P20.78 billion that had already appeared in the 2026 General Appropriations Act — the national spending law enacted for the current year — resurfaced in the proposed 2027 spending plan.

Another 3,543 projects worth P83.5 billion lacked geographic coordinates, complicating physical verification and audits, since coordinates are what allow inspectors and auditors to match budget entries to actual work sites. Mr. Gatchalian further flagged 347 lump-sum projects worth P14.79 billion without proper breakdowns — entries that pool funds without itemizing specific works — along with 533 overlapping or fragmented projects carrying a combined allocation of P63.18 billion, a pattern that makes it harder to track total spending at any single location. In addition, 62 projects worth P1.52 billion had no specified construction scopes, and 20 projects worth P386.25 million listed conflicting types of work, such as simultaneous construction and rehabilitation.

Public Works Secretary Vivencio B. Dizon told senators during the budget hearing that the agency would clean up the project list before deliberations proceed.

Separately, Senator Panfilo M. Lacson questioned the DPWH over a Taguig City project after geotagged photographs — images whose embedded coordinates record where they were taken — attached to its billing reports showed coordinates in Leyte, about 600 kilometers from the project site. The project, identified as Contract ID 220B0106, involved slope protection along the Taguig River. DPWH inspection records cited by Mr. Lacson showed some photographs submitted with billing documents carried coordinates pointing to Tacloban City, a mismatch that could be checked directly against the documented project location.

Mr. Dizon said on Monday that revisions to the proposed 2027 DPWH budget were underway as the agency also sought additional funding for flood control projects. How the cleaned-up project list holds up when congressional deliberations resume will be the next checkpoint for the department's 2027 allocation.

— Francessca S. Abalos, BusinessWorld