Win Gatchalian says ‘no more ghost projects’ with cleaner DPWH 2026 budget

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Friday gave assurance that there will no longer be ghost or non-existent flood control projects as the Department of Public Works and Highways addressed some of the red flags under its proposed 2026 budget. 

Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, said that while the proposed budget of DPWH for next year is not 100% clean, the questionable items were already reduced during the deliberations at the committee-level. 

“Marami kaming nakita–P4 billion plus ang tinanggal naming mga red flags,” he said in a Super Radyo dzBB interview. 

(We saw a lot of red flags in the proposed DPWH budget, but we already removed over P4 billion worth of red flags.) 

“Pero ang kagandahan naman, ‘yung mga projects na walang station number, pinalagyan natin lahat ng station numbers. Kaya impossible na magkaroon ng ghost projects. ‘Yan, maga-guarantee ko ‘yan 100% wala nang ghost projects. 100% wala na ring mga underspecs na projects dahil meron nang mga station numbers,” he added.

(The good thing is that we already put station numbers in all projects that don’t have them. That’s why it’s impossible to still have ghost projects. That I could guarantee 100%, that there will no longer be ghost projects. There will also be no projects that have underspecs because there are station numbers already.) 

Gatchalian previously revealed several "red flags" in the proposed budget of the DPWH for fiscal year 2026, such as projects that have no station number, being duplicate, having multiple phases, or reappearing from the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) to the 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP).

DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon gave an explanation for such red flags during the budget deliberations. 

Among which, Dizon said, is the validation of 798 out of the 946 supposed reappearing items, amounting to P11.656 billion.

The Senate committee on finance has further slashed the proposed 2026 budget of the DPWH to P568.56 billion from P624.48 billion under the House-approved General Appropriations Bill (GAB).

To recall, DPWH initially proposed a P881.31 billion budget under the 2026 NEP, but this was reduced to P625.78 billion after the removal of locally funded flood control projects amid the revelations of substandard or ghost projects.—AOL, GMA Integrated News