12/18/2025
₱45 billion is NOT a single project...
It is NOT a confidential or discretionary fund...
It is NOT hidden money parked outside scrutiny...
It is the amount cut by the Senate from the Department of Public Works and Highways’ proposed 2026 budget.
DPWH is asking for its restoration, arguing that the reduction affects roughly 10,000 projects nationwide.
Those facts are not contested.
What is contested is what that cut actually means on the ground, and whether restoring it is justified.
DPWH’s justification is, at its core, technical rather than political.
The Senate applied reductions using updated construction materials price data to remove overpricing from the budget.
DPWH does not dispute that overpricing existed, nor does it reject the goal of lowering costs.
The disagreement lies in how the correction was applied. According to DPWH, the cuts were largely formula-driven and applied broadly, without sufficient differentiation at the project level. Infrastructure projects do not operate in uniform conditions.
Geography, terrain, distance from material sources, weather exposure, access roads, and engineering design all influence cost.
A road in flat urban terrain is not equivalent to a road carved through mountains or flood-prone areas.
When budgets are reduced without accounting for these differences, DPWH argues, some projects are pushed below the threshold where they can be bid out or completed.
The department’s warning is practical rather than rhetorical. Projects that fall below viable cost do not become cheaper.
They fail.
Contractors do not bid, contracts are terminated, or projects stall indefinitely.
The result is not savings, but delay, rebidding, and in many cases higher costs later through variation orders or restarted procurement. From a purely engineering and procurement standpoint, DPWH’s argument that precision matters carries weight.
DPWH also made an admission that shapes the entire dispute. Secretary Vince Dizon acknowledged that the department’s initial budget submission lacked sufficient cost detail.
That acknowledgment matters because it explains why lawmakers resorted to broad cuts in the first place. The agency apologized for the deficiency and later submitted revised data, claiming it reflected project-level costing, updated material prices, and regional logistics realities.
Alongside this, DPWH made a clear commitment that no projects already removed by Congress would be reinstated.
Flood control projects that were flagged as suspicious remain excluded.
The request is not to revive questionable items, but to correct funding levels for projects that survived congressional scrutiny.
Any balanced assessment must also consider the context in which this request is being made. Vince Dizon assumed leadership of DPWH at a moment when the agency was already under intense pressure.
Flood control scandals were unfolding. Fraud audits were ongoing.
Public trust was collapsing. Congress was openly skeptical, if not hostile.
He did not inherit a clean institution or a blank slate. He inherited an agency already damaged by years of audit findings, public controversy, and systemic issues.
Since taking over, Dizon has taken steps that are not merely cosmetic.
He publicly acknowledged corruption within the agency, cooperated with investigations, accepted the removal of questionable projects, pushed for greater transparency, and openly admitted that DPWH has not yet earned the public’s trust.
These actions do not erase past failures, nor do they guarantee future success.
But they do represent a departure from the reflexive defensiveness that has historically characterized troubled agencies.
Reform at this scale is not painless. It generates internal resistance, political backlash, and sustained pressure on leadership.
From a technical standpoint, DPWH’s concern about underfunding remains valid. Infrastructure budgets operate on thresholds.
When funding drops below those thresholds, the consequences are predictable: failed bidding, repeated rebidding, legal disputes, delayed delivery, and, paradoxically, higher costs later.
Aggressive cuts may look clean on paper but can undermine implementation. DPWH’s position is not that money should flow freely or without oversight, but that projects that remain in the budget should be funded at levels that allow clean, competitive, and timely ex*****on.
At the same time, skepticism toward DPWH is neither irrational nor unfair.
The agency’s record includes repeated Commission on Audit red flags, chronic project delays, suspended and abandoned works, large underspending despite massive allocations, and confirmed cases of ghost and substandard projects.
These are institutional failures accumulated over many years. Which worsened during the Duterte administration.
Reform at the top does not automatically translate into clean ex*****on at the district level, where most projects are implemented and where oversight has historically been weakest.
Even Dizon himself acknowledges that trust has not yet been rebuilt.
The Senate’s posture reflects this institutional memory. Its approach is not anti-infrastructure, but risk-averse.
Lawmakers view cuts as a tool to enforce discipline, lower prices, and reduce leakage.
Their position is grounded in the belief that trust must follow transparency, not precede it. Once funds are restored, leverage weakens, and the risk of regression increases.
That concern is legitimate, even if it carries the risk of overcorrection.
It is also important to situate the dispute within the broader fiscal picture. Even after the ₱45 billion cut, DPWH remains one of the largest recipients in the national budget.
Infrastructure spending remains substantial, and funds were redirected to education and social services rather than removed from the system entirely.
This is not an infrastructure shutdown. It is a test of credibility and governance.
Two realities coexist. DPWH under Vince Dizon is making a genuine effort to reform, and those efforts involve real political and institutional cost.
At the same time, DPWH as an institution still bears the weight of its past, and trust cannot be restored by intent alone.
The ₱45 billion question is not about generosity or punishment. It is about how reform is incentivized without paralyzing government.
If reform is never met with functional support, agencies stagnate and projects fail. If support is given without proof, old patterns return.
The defensible middle ground is conditional credibility.
Transparent pricing, project-level disclosure, competitive bidding, measurable delivery, and clean audits are the standards by which restoration should be evaluated.
Not promises. Not rhetoric. Results.
The real question, then, is not whether DPWH deserves trust today, but whether the system can verify reform while allowing government to function. That balance, not the ₱45 billion figure itself, is what this controversy ultimately exposes.
- JLB 🇵🇭
