DPWH admits proposed 2024 budget includes projects with multiple allocations

DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan in a Senate hearing (File photo from Voltaire F. Domingo/Senate PRIB)

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) told members of the House of Representatives that it is checking the double and multiple identical projects in the proposed 2024 national budget.

A lawmaker estimated the numerous entries amount to P4.4 billion during Thursday’s Thursday House Committee on Appropriations’ deliberations of DPWH’s P822.2 billion proposed budget.

BH Representative Bernadette Herrera asked how double-entry items were present in the National Expenditures Program (NEP) when DPWH should have reviewed this information.

Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan said they have already conveyed these items to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

He claimed these entries were already in the 2023 national budget or the General Appropriations Act (GAA) last year.

“What about these redundant projects?” Herrera grilled Bonoan in Filipino.

“The DBM saw and withheld 157 projects worth P4.4 billion because they had the same title same description, but different amounts. That’s why it wasn’t released,” the lawmaker noticed.

“And I saw that this was the same case in the NEP now,” she pointed out.

“What do we do about this P4.4 billion na double entry?” she questioned Bonoan.

“Are these for the 2023 budget? We have already made representations to the Department of Budget and Management, your Honor,” the DPWH secretary responded.

“The policy is since these are overlapping in the allocation, I think the policy of the DBM is only one of these will have to be released,” he claimed.

However, the DPWH chief eventually admitted identical items were also found in the proposed national budget for next year.

He said they are checking on these amounts.

“Precisely, like you said, you vet before you put in the NEP, but how come nagkaka-double (we have double) entry?” Herrera repeated her question.

“This is P4.4 (billion), 157 projects,” the lawmaker emphasized.

“Unfortunately, all these double, well, double entry or multiple entry came about after the General Appropriations Act, your Honor,” Bonoan said.

“But for 2024, yong National Expenditures Program, again, we have noted actually that there are some… There are also some projects that have double allocation, so we are correcting it at this point in time, your Honor,” he finally confessed.

“We are now correcting them,” Bonoan said again.

BH Party-list Representative Bernadette Herrera (File photo from her Facebook page)

Previous concerns over double or multiple appropriations for one project in NEP had been raised before.

Last August 24, former Senator Panfilo Lacson revealed the existence of proposed government projects in NEP that have budgets bloated by more than twice or thrice.

At the same time, the former senator said 26 projects have received multiple appropriations in the budget bill.

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