1 Overview

This first section profiles the long-run budget of the DPWH Office of the Secretary: a (still incomplete) time series of the NEP, GAA, and Actual Obligations running back to 1988. Three views are shown — the nominal trend, the department's share of the national budget, and the real (inflation-adjusted) trend in constant 2018 prices.

All figures throughout this document are drawn from the National Expenditure Program (NEP), General Appropriations Act (GAA), and related budget documents published by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

A few conventions:

  • Amounts are reported in thousand pesos; everything below is rescaled to PHP billions (/ 1e6).
  • The headline series is New + Automatic Appropriations (the full agency budget, including automatic items). This is also the numerator used for the share of the national budget.
  • Points mark years with observed data; the connecting line is interpolated, so visible gaps flag where encoding is still pending.

2 The Long View: DPWH Appropriations Since 1988

The four views below track the DPWH Office of the Secretary's budget across nearly four decades — in nominal pesos, as a share of the national budget, in inflation-adjusted terms, and in a single reference table — before the rest of the document turns to the program, item, and district-level detail of recent years.

2.1 Nominal Trend

In nominal terms the DPWH OSec budget climbs steeply from the mid-2010s. Two deviations from the usual NEP-to-GAA pattern stand out and are worth raising in hearings: the 2019 GAA fell below the NEP (the year of the ₱95.4B line-item veto; a smaller ₱26.1B veto also trimmed the 2025 GAA), and the 2026 GAA drops sharply below its NEP — the reverse of the usual upward realignment seen in most other years.

2.2 Share of the National Budget

The share view rescales the same money against the size of the whole budget. The department's footprint roughly doubles from ~6-8% (1990s-2000s) to a mid-teens share in the latest years — evidence that DPWH's expansion outpaced overall budget growth, not merely tracked it. The 2026 NEP-to-GAA gap reappears here as a one-year contraction in the GAA share.

2.3 Real Trend (Inflation-Adjusted)

Holding prices constant at 2018 tempers the nominal story: much of the post-2018 "growth" is the price level catching up. In real terms the GAA budget is broadly flat between 2018 and 2023 before resuming its climb — a useful counterweight to headline peso figures in the hearing room. Switch deflator_choice to "GDPDeflator" in the setup chunk to see the GDP-deflator version.

2.4 Summary Table

DPWH Office of the Secretary, New + Automatic Appropriations (PHP billions unless noted)
FY NEP GAA Actual Oblig. Realignment (GAA-NEP) DPWH Share (GAA) GAA, real 2018
2026 881.3 530.9 -- -350.4 7.8% 396.8
2025 900.0 1,088.8 1,077.2 188.8 17.2% 849.4
2024 822.2 997.9 1,239.7 175.7 17.3% 791.3
2023 718.4 894.2 967.9 175.8 17.0% 731.9
2022 686.1 786.6 856.5 100.5 15.7% 682.3
2021 667.3 695.7 662.2 28.3 15.4% 638.6
2020 534.3 581.7 466.1 47.4 14.2% 554.9
2019 555.7 464.6 480.5 -91.1 12.7% 453.8
2018 643.3 650.9 696.3 7.6 17.3% 650.9
2017 458.6 467.7 621.9 9.1 14.0% 492.2
2016 391.2 397.1 425.8 5.9 13.2% 429.9
2015 300.5 303.2 351.3 2.6 11.6% 332.3
2014 213.0 219.3 191.8 6.4 9.7% 242.0
2013 165.6 169.3 200.6 3.8 8.4% 193.6
2012 125.5 125.7 157.6 0.2 6.9% 147.5
2011 110.6 110.6 122.0 0.0 6.7% 133.8
2010 105.3 135.6 141.8 30.3 8.8% 171.8
2009 120.0 137.5 158.8 17.5 9.6% 180.8
2008 94.5 102.4 137.9 8.0 8.3% 140.4
2007 73.6 79.5 106.3 5.9 7.1% 117.9
2006 62.3 62.3 85.3 0.0 5.9% 95.1
2005 49.5 49.5 50.7 0.0 5.4% 79.6
2004 48.2 47.2 57.9 -1.0 5.5% 81.0
2003 51.5 53.2 53.3 1.7 6.6% 95.7
2002 44.3 48.3 47.6 3.9 6.3% 88.8
2001 47.7 44.6 55.1 -3.1 6.4% 84.2
2000 42.4 52.9 64.5 10.5 8.1% 105.3
1999 37.6 38.1 47.6 0.5 6.4% 80.9
1998 46.8 35.7 49.7 -11.1 6.8% 80.4
1997 38.0 54.4 45.1 16.4 11.0% 134.0
1996 31.5 41.1 39.4 9.7 9.2% 107.1
1995 22.4 25.0 26.6 2.6 6.4% 70.4
1994 18.8 24.4 30.4 5.6 6.5% 73.5
1993 18.6 23.8 18.7 5.2 7.0% 80.6
1992 -- 26.0 22.0 -- 7.9% 94.1
1991 14.3 -- 23.7 -- -- --
1990 -- 13.7 -- -- 6.5% 64.3
1989 12.0 -- 9.7 -- -- --
1988 4.7 8.9 -- 4.2 4.7% 52.7

3 The DPWH Budget by Program

DPWH organises its budget into eight programs. Consistent program labelling only begins with the 2018 budget, so this section runs 2018-2026. These amounts are reported in pesos and are rescaled to PHP billions (/ 1e9). All figures are New Appropriations (the program totals reconcile to the New-Appropriations column used in Section 1).

3.1 Composition Over Time

The composition shift is stark: the Convergence and Special Support Program (apricot/salmon) swells under the current administration, while the Network Development and Flood Management shares contract — most dramatically in the 2026 GAA, where Flood Management is cut to a sliver. The dashed line marks the Duterte-to-Marcos transition (FY2023 is the first budget proposed by the current administration).

GAA by Program, PHP billions
Program 2027 2026 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018
General Administration and Support NA 16.6 13.3 12.8 12.6 10.4 12.8 15.0 12.6 9.5
Support to Operations NA 29.6 10.3 11.7 9.8 8.3 21.6 34.8 31.5 44.5
Asset Preservation Program NA 99.4 154.1 139.0 124.6 117.5 66.0 52.9 45.5 65.0
Network Development Program NA 96.8 112.7 132.3 119.2 127.0 124.5 113.4 95.3 185.5
Bridge Program NA 34.1 42.6 24.8 31.2 25.4 25.4 30.2 24.3 35.7
Flood Management Program NA 4.8 249.8 244.6 185.8 129.0 101.8 90.1 90.7 127.7
Local Program NA 7.8 18.7 20.6 21.7 15.4 280.6 198.8 123.9 119.0
Convergence and Special Support Program NA 240.5 486.2 411.0 388.3 352.8 62.1 45.7 30.3 51.0

3.2 NEP vs GAA and Realignments

The same realignments read most cleanly as a matrix — each cell is the net move from the President's proposal (NEP) to the enacted law (GAA), with blue = increases and red = cuts:

Two patterns stand out for the hearing room: the Convergence and Special Support Program gains year after year (peaking at +₱265B in 2025), while Network Development and Bridge programs are routinely trimmed from their proposed levels. The 2026 column is exceptional — Flood Management is realigned down by ~₱246B, the largest single-program cut in the series.

Net Realignment (GAA - NEP) by Program, PHP billions
Program 2026 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018
General Administration and Support -3.9 -4.3 -4.6 -3.5 -6.0 -2.4 0.0 2.1 0.1
Support to Operations -52.8 -78.4 -67.5 -50.9 -44.1 -16.6 -41.7 -18.5 -34.9
Asset Preservation Program -8.8 55.7 23.4 36.1 54.2 7.1 1.1 -13.5 -0.3
Network Development Program -85.7 -28.2 -15.8 -21.3 -21.9 -33.0 -5.8 -27.6 -4.8
Bridge Program -18.2 -16.9 -21.1 -6.8 -10.0 -19.1 -2.7 -9.4 -3.1
Flood Management Program -246.1 -4.5 28.9 54.0 -2.1 -24.1 -5.3 -23.6 -0.5
Local Program -7.6 0.7 -4.6 -6.1 -15.8 104.5 101.9 4.0 53.1
Convergence and Special Support Program 72.7 264.7 236.9 174.3 146.3 11.9 0.0 -3.9 -2.0

4 Inside the Programs: Sub-Programs and Line Items

The program totals in Section 6 hide a great deal. Beneath each program sit sub-programs and, below those, the individual line items — "Preventive Maintenance – Primary Roads," "SIPAG – Access Roads... leading to Major/Strategic Public Buildings," and dozens more — that are where budgeting actually happens. This section works from a granular, multi-year encoding of those items (FY 2018 onward) to ask three questions the aggregates cannot answer: where has emphasis shifted between programs, what does Congress add to and cut at the most granular level, and which line items are the biggest — and has that changed?

For readability, line items that the budget splits only by road class — the separate Primary Roads, Secondary Roads and Tertiary Roads versions of Preventive Maintenance, Road Widening, and a few others — are combined here into a single item each.

4.1 What's Inside the Major Programs

The program names in Section 6 are broad umbrellas. Below is what each of the six operational programs actually contained in FY2025 — the last full budget before the flood-control scandal reshaped the FY2026 cycle — shown as its constituent line items.

The contents follow the department's core mandates, with two important exceptions:

  • Asset Preservation is road upkeep: preventive maintenance of primary, secondary and tertiary roads, plus rehabilitation of roads damaged by slips, landslides and disasters.
  • Network Development is road expansion: road widening, by-pass and diversion roads, missing links and new roads, flyovers and interchanges.
  • Bridge is exactly that — construction, replacement, widening and retrofitting of bridges.
  • Flood Management is the government's headline flood line: construction and rehabilitation of flood-mitigation structures and drainage, including works along major river basins.
  • Convergence & Special Support is the outlier — not a single purpose but a basket of two sub-programs, SIPAG and BIP, whose items are access roads to public buildings, multi-purpose buildings, and their own flood- mitigation structures. Much of what looks like "convergence" spending is thus district road-building, construction, and flood control under a different label.
  • Local Program historically carried the same district works (local roads, multipurpose facilities, flood control and drainage) before FY2022, when most of it migrated into Convergence.

The key takeaway is that flood-control money is spread across at least three programs — the Flood Management Program, the SIPAG/BIP flood-mitigation items inside Convergence, and the Local Program's flood-control line — which is part of why the total was so hard to see, and so easy to inflate, before the FY2026 reckoning.

4.2 The Shift from the "Local Program" to "Convergence and Special Support"

The clearest structural change in this period is a relabeling of district infrastructure. Through FY2021, locally-oriented projects ran through the Local Program; the Convergence and Special Support Program was a modest line. In FY2022 the two swapped places — Local collapsed and Convergence absorbed its role, then grew far larger.

Before the swap, the Local Program ran at ₱119-281B while Convergence sat at ₱30-62B. In FY2022 the Local Program fell to ₱15B and Convergence leapt to ₱353B; it peaked at ₱504B in FY2025 before the FY2026 flood-driven cut brought it to ₱240B. Convergence is not a single purpose but a basket — it houses the SIPAG and BIP sub-programs, whose items range from access roads and multi-purpose buildings to, notably, flood-mitigation structures. So a large share of what looks like "convergence" or "special support" spending is, underneath, the same district road-and-building-and-drainage work that the Local Program used to carry — now concentrated in one fast-growing, discretionary program.

4.3 What Congress Adds To — and Cuts — at the Item Level

Reading Congress's changes (enacted minus proposed) at the individual item level, over FY2018-2025 (the FY2026 cycle is treated separately below, as it was reshaped by the flood-control scandal), reveals a consistent pattern: the legislature moves money out of large, national, strategic works and into district-scale, insertable items.

The additions are dominated by SIPAG and BIP items — Access Roads to Public Buildings (+₱207B and +₱105B), Multi-Purpose Buildings (+₱176B), and their Flood-Mitigation Structures variants — together with Local Roads (+₱182B) and Multipurpose Facilities (+₱104B). The cuts fall on large national works: By-Pass & Diversion Roads (-₱94B), Flood Mitigation in Major River Basins (-₱71B), New Bridges (-₱49B), and National Roads (-₱43B). In other words, the legislature consistently trims the department's big strategic-network and major-river projects and redirects the money into smaller, district-level, more easily-sited items — the granular signature of the Central-Office-to-districts pattern documented in the operating-unit analysis that follows.

Line items Congress most enlarged, cumulative FY2018-2025 (enacted minus proposed)
Line item Program Cumulative addition (PHP B)
SIPAG - Access Roads to Public Buildings Convergence and Special Support 206.5
Local Roads Local 182.2
BIP - Multi-Purpose Buildings Convergence and Special Support 175.5
SIPAG - Flood Mitigation Structures Convergence and Special Support 131.3
BIP - Access Roads to Public Buildings Convergence and Special Support 104.6
Multipurpose Facilities Local 104.0
Preventive Maintenance Asset Preservation 94.0
BIP - Flood Mitigation Structures Convergence and Special Support 91.5
Roads w/ Slips & Landslide (rehab) Asset Preservation 78.8
Flood Mitigation Structures & Drainage Flood Management 63.9
Special Road Fund (MVUC) Convergence and Special Support 45.1
Flood Control Structures/ Facilities Local 39.2
SIPAG - Multi-Purpose Buildings Convergence and Special Support 31.5
SIPAG - Interjurisdictional Roads Convergence and Special Support 23.9
SIPAG - Coastal Roads / Causeway Convergence and Special Support 22.6

4.4 The FY2026 Cycle: A Scandal-Driven Revision

FY2026 was unlike any other year in this dataset, and it is why the analysis above stops at FY2025. Midway through 2025 a flood-control corruption scandal broke open — ghost projects, kickbacks, and a wave of identically-priced "multi-purpose building" and flood-control insertions. The fallout ran straight through the budget.

The original FY2026 NEP, prepared under then-Secretary Manuel Bonoan and submitted in August 2025, proposed the department's usual large flood-control program. After the scandal, a new Secretary — Vivencio "Vince" Dizon — took over in September and submitted an errata to the NEP, removing locally-funded flood-control projects on the President's directive. Congress then cut further. The result is a rare three-step collapse: original NEP → revised NEP → enacted GAA, all downward, the reverse of the department's usual pattern.

Two moves stand out. The Flood Management Program was gutted in the errata itself — from about ₱251B in the original NEP to roughly ₱16B in the revised version, a cut of some ₱235B before Congress even voted — as the flood-mitigation items at the heart of the scandal were pulled. But the revision was not purely subtractive: the Convergence & Special Support Program actually rose in the revised NEP (from ~₱168B to ~₱225B) and again in the enacted GAA (~₱240B), even as everything around it shrank. Congress then trained its knife on Network Development, cutting it from ~₱149B in the revised NEP to ~₱97B enacted.

So the headline "DPWH budget cut by roughly a third" masks a reshuffle: the scandal removed the flood-control program that had been the vehicle for insertions, but the discretionary Convergence basket — which, as shown above, contains its own flood-mitigation and district-building items — emerged from the FY2026 process larger, not smaller. Whether that represents genuine reform or the same spending under a cleaner-sounding label is exactly the kind of question the granular view is meant to surface.

4.5 The Biggest Line Items, and How They've Shifted

Ranking items by enacted size shows how the composition of DPWH spending has turned over. In FY2018 the largest items were classic road and flood works; by FY2025 the SIPAG and BIP items — which barely existed earlier — sit at the very top, alongside the two big flood-mitigation lines.

The turnover is striking. In FY2018 the biggest items were Flood Mitigation Structures (₱97B), Road Widening (₱64B), By-Pass & Diversion Roads (₱57B), Local Roads (₱51B) and Missing Links / New Roads (₱36B) — a portfolio of national road and flood works. By FY2025, the SIPAG Access Roads to Public Buildings (₱137B) and BIP Multi-Purpose Buildings (₱96B) items — which did not exist under those names before FY2022 — rank among the very largest, alongside the two big flood-mitigation lines (which Congress simultaneously cut from the proposal) and, once the road classes are combined, Preventive Maintenance (₱104B) — the quiet, recurring cost of keeping the existing network usable. The composition of the DPWH budget, in short, has tilted from building and maintaining the national network toward a fast-expanding, district-oriented "convergence" portfolio.

5 New Appropriations by Operating Unit

The DPWH disburses its budget across some 200+ operating units — the Central Office, regional offices, and district engineering offices (DEOs). The data run from the FY2014 budget through FY2026, spanning the 16th through 20th Congresses — the Aquino, Duterte, and Marcos administrations, and seven House Speakers. The series is now complete across all thirteen fiscal years; the GAA encoded for 2019 reflects the budget after the President's ₱95.4-billion line-item veto (isolated below). That span lets us trace how district money has moved between proposal and enactment across administrations. Amounts are in pesos, rescaled to PHP billions.

Because the realignments that move money toward district engineering offices are made on the House floor, the relevant political actor is often the Speaker of the day as much as the sitting President. Seven Speakers presided over the budgets in this window; their terms and the fiscal-year budgets each steered to passage are below.

House Speakers presiding over the DPWH budgets analysed here. *FY2019's encoded GAA is post-veto; the ₱95.4B line-item veto that year fell mostly on the Central Office (see the veto chart below).
Speaker Term began Congress FY budgets Administration
Feliciano Belmonte Jr. 22 Jul 2013 16th FY2014-2016 Aquino
Pantaleon Alvarez 25 Jul 2016 17th FY2017-2018 Duterte
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo 23 Jul 2018 17th FY2019* Duterte
Alan Peter Cayetano 22 Jul 2019 18th FY2020 Duterte
Lord Allan Velasco 12 Oct 2020 18th FY2021-2022 Duterte
Martin Romualdez 25 Jul 2022 19th FY2023-2025 Marcos
Faustino "Bojie" Dy III 17 Sep 2025 20th FY2026 Marcos

5.1 Most of the Money Sits in the Central Office

Across the series the Central Office holds most of the enacted budget — typically 60-75%, peaking at 75% in 2025 — with 2015-2016 (both under 50%) and the unusual 2026 GAA (62%) the main exceptions. A single operating unit carrying most of the department's budget is a reason for closer scrutiny of centrally-managed projects, not a reason to assume they are already well accounted for. The enacted shares also understate how concentrated the executive's proposal is, and how much Congress rearranges it on the way to enactment — the subject of the section that follows.

DPWH GAA: Central Office vs all other operating units, PHP billions
FY Central Office (B) All Other Offices (B) Total (B) Central share
2014 121.2 85.4 206.6 58.6%
2015 141.5 148.9 290.5 48.7%
2016 150.4 233.9 384.3 39.1%
2017 288.7 166.0 454.7 63.5%
2018 409.5 228.4 637.9 64.2%
2019 259.3 194.8 454.1 57.1%
2020 330.1 250.8 580.9 56.8%
2021 422.6 272.2 694.8 60.8%
2022 487.6 298.1 785.7 62.1%
2023 622.5 270.6 893.1 69.7%
2024 729.1 267.7 996.8 73.1%
2025 814.7 273.0 1,087.7 74.9%
2026 326.6 203.0 529.6 61.7%

5.2 From Proposal to Law: Central Office to the Districts

The executive's proposal concentrates the budget in the Central Office even more than the enacted law does. In pesos the redistribution is large and one-directional: Congress channels tens — and, in recent years, hundreds — of billions toward district engineering offices between the proposal and the enacted law, in every year on record, while the Central Office is cut in most (first chart). In share terms the pattern is cleaner still: in every year (2014-2026) the Central Office's share of new appropriations falls from NEP to GAA while the districts' share rises — a swing reaching nearly 30 percentage points in 2021 and 2023, when the proposal parked almost the entire budget centrally (second chart). Congress, in other words, systematically moves money toward named district engineering offices; this is the redistribution that the office-by-office realignment analysis below traces in detail.

Two of those Central cuts come with an asterisk, because they are not really Congress's doing. The operating-unit GAA encoded for 2019 is the budget after the President's ₱95.4-billion line-item veto — the largest in recent memory — and that veto landed overwhelmingly on the Central Office (₱74B of the ₱95B struck, versus ₱21B across the districts). That is why 2019 shows such a deep Central cut above. Congress's own pre-veto budget was routine: it trimmed the Central Office by roughly ₱26B and added about ₱30B to the districts, the usual direction of travel. The chart below splits what Congress actually passed into the part that survived the veto (blue) and the part the President struck out (grey); the diamonds mark the President's original proposal (NEP). Because the veto hit the Central Office hardest, it paradoxically raised the district share of the final budget (from 38% pre-veto to 42% enacted).

5.3 The Largest District Engineering Offices in Each Congress

Which districts command the biggest budgets is not fixed — it shifts from one Congress to the next as offices are created, priorities move, and realignment patterns change. The charts and tables below rank the top 20 district engineering offices in each Congress, showing both what the Executive proposed (NEP) and what was finally enacted (GAA), summed over that Congress's budgets. Reading down the Congresses gives a sense of which parts of the country the DPWH budget has most favoured over time.

A few patterns stand out. The offices that top the list migrate over time — Abra and other Cordillera and northern-Luzon districts dominate the Duterte Congresses, while Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, and Metro Manila offices rise to the top under Marcos. And in almost every case the enacted (blue) bar towers over the proposed (pink) one: the largest districts are large not because the Executive proposed them so, but because Congress built them up on enactment — the realignment story, seen from the districts' side.

5.3.1 Top 20 tables, by Congress

The same rankings in full, with the exact proposed and enacted amounts and the net addition Congress made on enactment. Each table is the top 20 offices by enacted GAA for that Congress.

5.3.1.1 17th Congress (FY2017-2019)

Top 20 District Engineering Offices by Enacted GAA --- 17th Congress (FY2017-2019)
Rank District Engineering Office NEP (PHP B) GAA (PHP B) Net add (PHP B)
1 Metro Manila 1st 11.59 12.33 0.74
2 Batangas 4th 3.16 9.00 5.83
3 North Manila 8.50 8.63 0.13
4 Bulacan 1st 6.75 8.17 1.43
5 Davao City 5.33 8.10 2.77
6 Albay 2nd 5.73 7.55 1.82
7 Metro Manila 3rd 7.55 7.47 -0.07
8 Tarlac 6.06 7.21 1.16
9 Bulacan 2nd 5.08 7.17 2.09
10 Samar 1st 6.04 6.93 0.89
11 Quezon City 1st 6.68 6.87 0.19
12 Metro Manila 2nd 6.17 6.75 0.58
13 Mindoro Occidental 5.44 6.48 1.05
14 Sorsogon 3.97 6.27 2.30
15 Pangasinan 3rd 5.09 6.13 1.04
16 Nueva Ecija 2nd 4.55 5.97 1.43
17 Cavite 5.58 5.70 0.12
18 Pampanga 1st 3.68 5.63 1.95
19 Abra 3.16 5.48 2.31
20 Sorsogon 2nd 5.85 5.46 -0.39

5.3.1.2 18th Congress (FY2020-2022)

Top 20 District Engineering Offices by Enacted GAA --- 18th Congress (FY2020-2022)
Rank District Engineering Office NEP (PHP B) GAA (PHP B) Net add (PHP B)
1 Metro Manila 1st 9.29 18.07 8.78
2 Abra 5.09 15.94 10.85
3 Batangas 4th 4.31 12.99 8.69
4 Bulacan 1st 5.96 12.46 6.49
5 Albay 2nd 5.60 12.28 6.68
6 Davao City 5.96 11.57 5.61
7 Quezon City 1st 6.15 11.32 5.17
8 North Manila 6.92 10.42 3.50
9 Cavite 5.64 10.34 4.70
10 Metro Manila 3rd 5.77 9.65 3.88
11 Davao de Oro 1st 4.62 9.09 4.48
12 Camarines Norte 5.15 8.34 3.18
13 Rizal 1st 4.28 7.81 3.53
14 Tarlac 4.55 7.63 3.08
15 Laguna 2nd 4.24 7.27 3.04
16 Pampanga 1st 3.57 7.26 3.69
17 Bulacan 2nd 3.64 7.16 3.52
18 Nueva Ecija 1st 4.60 7.11 2.51
19 Mindoro Occidental 4.66 7.04 2.38
20 Aurora 4.24 7.00 2.76

5.3.1.3 19th Congress (FY2023-2025)

Top 20 District Engineering Offices by Enacted GAA --- 19th Congress (FY2023-2025)
Rank District Engineering Office NEP (PHP B) GAA (PHP B) Net add (PHP B)
1 Ilocos Norte 1st 11.63 18.93 7.30
2 Metro Manila 1st 7.41 17.92 10.52
3 Bulacan 1st 4.40 16.70 12.29
4 Metro Manila 3rd 5.68 15.47 9.79
5 Quezon City 1st 5.09 11.73 6.64
6 Tarlac 3.64 10.66 7.02
7 Batangas 4th 2.37 10.28 7.91
8 Sorsogon 1.06 10.26 9.20
9 Bulacan 2nd 3.14 10.04 6.90
10 Pangasinan 3rd 5.10 9.72 4.63
11 Rizal 1st 4.78 8.25 3.47
12 Cavite 3.51 8.07 4.56
13 Pampanga 1st 2.64 8.06 5.42
14 Laguna 2nd 3.56 7.88 4.33
15 Zambales 1st 1.91 7.72 5.81
16 Iloilo 2nd 3.92 7.66 3.73
17 Albay 2nd 2.55 7.59 5.05
18 Isabela 4th 2.14 7.55 5.41
19 North Manila 3.76 7.32 3.56
20 Leyte 1st 2.73 7.19 4.47

5.3.1.4 20th Congress (FY2026)

Top 20 District Engineering Offices by Enacted GAA --- 20th Congress (FY2026)
Rank District Engineering Office NEP (PHP B) GAA (PHP B) Net add (PHP B)
1 Batangas 1st 0.86 4.69 3.83
2 Davao de Oro 1st 2.48 3.34 0.85
3 Metro Manila 1st 3.54 3.34 -0.20
4 Metro Manila 3rd 2.25 3.21 0.95
5 Antique 0.85 3.07 2.21
6 Batangas 4th 1.21 3.04 1.83
7 Eastern Samar 1.07 2.48 1.41
8 Bulacan 1st 1.88 2.33 0.45
9 Quezon 4th 1.42 2.21 0.79
10 Nueva Ecija 1st 1.28 2.11 0.83
11 Pangasinan 3rd 1.34 2.01 0.67
12 Isabela 4th 0.76 1.97 1.21
13 Quezon City 1st 2.23 1.82 -0.41
14 Laguna 2nd 1.91 1.79 -0.13
15 Tarlac 1.79 1.79 -0.01
16 Batangas 2nd 0.66 1.75 1.08
17 Bukidnon 2nd 1.16 1.69 0.53
18 Quezon 3rd 1.91 1.66 -0.25
19 Cebu 6th 1.37 1.65 0.29
20 Isabela 3rd 0.77 1.64 0.87

5.4 Top District Engineering Offices, by Size and by Realignment

Setting the Central Office aside, two questions matter for the hearings: which district engineering offices command the largest budgets, and how much of each budget was in the President's proposal versus added on enactment. The first two charts break the largest offices into what was proposed (grey) and what Congress added on enactment — shown as a single total (purple) in the first chart, then with the additions split between the Duterte (red) and Marcos (blue) administrations in the second. The third chart ranks offices by the realignments they received within each Congress — now reaching back to the 16th (the three Aquino-era budgets) — coloured by the fiscal year that delivered each addition, with the amounts the President later vetoed shown in grey — the FY2019 vetoes on the 17th-Congress bars (medium grey) and the smaller FY2025 vetoes on the 19th (dark grey).

The realignment matrix below splits each of the most-favoured offices' realignments between the Duterte and Marcos administrations — making clear, for instance, that Abra's windfalls came overwhelmingly under Duterte (2017-2022), while others (e.g. Bulacan 1st, Tarlac) lean Marcos.

Top 20 D.E. Offices by total NEP-to-GAA realignment, FY2017-2026 (PHP billions)
Office Duterte (B) Marcos (B) Total (B)
Batangas 4th D.E. Office 14.5 9.7 24.3
Bulacan 1st D.E. Office 7.9 12.7 20.7
Metro Manila 1st D.E. Office 9.5 10.3 19.8
Abra D.E. Office 13.2 3.1 16.2
Sorsogon D.E. Office 5.9 10.1 16.0
Metro Manila 3rd D.E. Office 3.8 10.7 14.6
Albay 2nd D.E. Office 8.5 5.2 13.7
Bulacan 2nd D.E. Office 5.6 6.6 12.2
Pampanga 1st D.E. Office 5.6 6.0 11.7
Quezon City 1st D.E. Office 5.4 6.2 11.6
Tarlac D.E. Office 4.2 7.0 11.2
Davao City D.E. Office 8.4 1.9 10.3
Cavite D.E. Office 4.8 4.6 9.4
Isabela 4th D.E. Office 2.5 6.6 9.1
Batangas 1st D.E. Office 2.7 6.2 9.0
Pangasinan 3rd D.E. Office 3.6 5.3 8.9
Zambales 1st D.E. Office 2.6 6.0 8.6
Iloilo 2nd D.E. Office 4.2 4.1 8.3
Mindoro Occidental D.E. Office 3.4 4.8 8.2
Laguna 2nd D.E. Office 3.9 4.2 8.1

5.5 Which District Engineering Offices Merit a Closer Look?

Rather than single out any one region, this section applies a transparent screen to every district engineering office and lets the data nominate which ones deserve a deeper dive. Each office is scored on four independent signals over FY2017-2026 (the Duterte and Marcos administrations):

  • Size — it is among the ten largest recipients of realignments;
  • Intensity — realignments make up at least 60% of the office's enacted budget;
  • Persistence — it received a realignment in at least eight of the ten years;
  • Tilt — the office's realignment totals under the two administrations differ by at least ₱4B.

Every signal builds on the same yearly realignment — the gap between an office's enacted and proposed budget, GAA − NEP (in ₱B). The tilt signal sums those yearly realignments within each administration and takes the difference between the two totals:

admin tilt = (total GAA − NEP across FY2017-2022) − (total GAA − NEP across FY2023-2026),

i.e. the office's total Duterte-era realignment minus its total Marcos-era realignment. A positive tilt means the office gained more under Duterte and is shown red in the chart below; a negative tilt means it gained more under Marcos and is shown blue; values near zero are grey.

Offices that trip several signals at once are the natural candidates for scrutiny.

The vertical axis starts at 0% and extends only as far as the data require. Two sets of offices fall outside it. First, 1 newly-created district engineering offices had no proposed budget (NEP = 0) anywhere in the FY2017-2026 window, so their realignment share is 100% by construction — money Congress provided where the executive proposed nothing — and they are excluded from the scatter: Cavite 5th D.E. Office. Second, 5 very small offices fall below 0%, where the cumulative enacted budget came in under the proposal (a net trim rather than the padding that dominates the chart): Davao City 3rd D.E. Office (-240%); Davao del Norte 2nd D.E. Office (-43%); Bukidnon 4th D.E. Office (-32%); Southern Leyte 2nd D.E. Office (-18%); Zamboanga City 2nd D.E. Office (-14%). Because these offices are tiny, a modest peso cut reads as a large negative share, so those values are denominator artefacts more than meaningful signals.

The screen returns a consistent shortlist — none of it about a single region. Batangas 4th D.E. Office is the largest single recipient of realignments — ₱24.3B, or 69% of its enacted budget, padded in all ten years and favoured fairly evenly by both administrations (₱14.5B Duterte, ₱9.7B Marcos), a standing fixture regardless of who holds power. Sorsogon is similarly relentless (₱16.0B, 66%, every year) but tilts Marcos-ward. Bulacan 1st (₱20.7B) is the second-largest recipient and leans Marcos (₱12.7B vs ₱7.9B). At the politically lopsided extremes sit Abra — the clearest Duterte-era office (₱13.2B vs ₱3.1B) — and Metro Manila 3rd, its Marcos-era mirror (₱10.7B vs ₱3.8B). These offices, not any one province, are where the strongest patterns lie and where project-level records would be worth pulling.

District engineering offices flagged for a closer look, sorted by number of signals then size
Office Realignment (B) Realignment share Years realigned Duterte (B) Marcos (B) Flags Signals
Batangas 4th D.E. Office 24.3 69% 10/10 14.5 9.7 4 large; realignment-heavy; every year; Duterte-leaning
Sorsogon D.E. Office 16.0 66% 10/10 5.9 10.1 4 large; realignment-heavy; every year; Marcos-leaning
Abra D.E. Office 16.2 59% 8/10 13.2 3.1 3 large; every year; Duterte-leaning
Bulacan 1st D.E. Office 20.7 52% 7/10 7.9 12.7 2 large; Marcos-leaning
Metro Manila 3rd D.E. Office 14.6 41% 6/10 3.8 10.7 2 large; Marcos-leaning
Albay 2nd D.E. Office 13.7 48% 8/10 8.5 5.2 2 large; every year
Bulacan 2nd D.E. Office 12.2 48% 8/10 5.6 6.6 2 large; every year
Pampanga 1st D.E. Office 11.7 52% 8/10 5.6 6.0 2 large; every year
Metro Manila 1st D.E. Office 19.8 38% 7/10 9.5 10.3 1 large
Quezon City 1st D.E. Office 11.6 36% 6/10 5.4 6.2 1 large
Davao City D.E. Office 10.3 45% 6/10 8.4 1.9 1 Duterte-leaning
Isabela 4th D.E. Office 9.1 56% 7/10 2.5 6.6 1 Marcos-leaning
Ilocos Norte 1st D.E. Office 7.8 27% 5/10 1.6 6.2 1 Marcos-leaning
Batangas 2nd D.E. Office 7.8 50% 8/10 3.2 4.6 1 every year
Cebu 7th D.E. Office 6.6 73% 4/10 2.3 4.3 1 realignment-heavy

6 The FY 2027 Proposal

The FY 2027 National Expenditure Program is the live budget document now before Congress — the one advocates can still shape. The proposal's figures already run through the tables and charts in the sections above; this section draws them together in one place: the proposal's overall size, its distribution by program and by district engineering office, and how it compares to the two most useful benchmarks — what the Executive proposed for FY 2026 (the previous NEP) and what Congress actually enacted (the previous GAA).

6.1 FY 2027 in Context: Comparison with FY 2026

At ₱642.6B, the FY 2027 proposal sits between the two FY 2026 figures. It is about ₱113B above the ₱529.6B that was finally enacted for 2026 — a budget slashed by the roughly ₱350B flood-control cut — but about ₱237B below the ₱880B the Executive had originally proposed for 2026. In other words, the Department is proposing to spend more than the shrunken 2026 law allows, but well short of its own ambitions a year earlier.

Read program by program, the FY 2027 proposal looks far more like the FY 2026 proposal than the FY 2026 enacted budget — the Executive is, in effect, re-proposing much of what Congress rearranged on the way to the 2026 GAA:

  • Flood Management, gutted to just ₱4.8B in the 2026 GAA, is restored to ₱103.5B in the FY 2027 proposal (though still below its ₱250.8B FY2026 NEP).
  • Network Development, which Congress cut to ₱96.8B on enactment, returns to ₱176.6B — close to its original FY2026 proposal.
  • The Convergence and Special Support Program — which Congress inflated to ₱240.5B on enactment — is proposed back down at ₱157.3B, roughly its FY2026 proposed level.

The full comparison, with the proposed change measured against the enacted 2026 budget (the current baseline):

FY 2027 Proposed New Appropriations vs FY 2026, by Program (PHP billions)
Program NEP 2026 GAA 2026 NEP 2027 Chg. vs 2026 GAA
Network Development Program 182.5 96.8 176.6 79.8
Convergence and Special Support Program 167.8 240.5 157.3 -83.2
Flood Management Program 250.8 4.8 103.5 98.7
Asset Preservation Program 108.3 99.4 76.5 -22.9
Support to Operations 82.4 29.6 51.6 22.0
Bridge Program 52.3 34.1 44.4 10.4
General Administration and Support 20.5 16.6 18.1 1.5
Local Program 15.4 7.8 14.6 6.8

6.2 By Program: Proposed and Enacted Levels

Zooming in on the programs, it helps to see the overall levels the Executive proposes and the legislature enacts — the raw distribution of pesos across programs, and where the FY 2027 proposal places them relative to the recent past.

At the department level, the FY 2027 NEP proposes ₱642.6B — a marked step down from the ₱880B proposed for 2026 and the ₱1,087.7B enacted for 2025 (the 2025 figure is the post-veto total; see the veto section). The proposed-versus-enacted totals over the full window make the swings plain:

The enacted budget ran above the proposal every year from 2020 to 2025 — a legislature adding to the President's plan — until FY2026, when the enacted total fell far below the proposal (the ₱246B flood-control cut). The FY2027 proposal resets the level near ₱643B.

How is the FY 2027 proposal distributed across programs? Two programs account for more than half of it: Network Development (₱176.6B, 27%) and the Convergence and Special Support Program (₱157.3B, 25%) — the latter historically the discretionary program that Congress inflated through realignments, now proposed at a high level in the Executive's own document.

Reading the two panels together is instructive. In the enacted budgets (lower panel), the Convergence and Special Support Program balloons after 2022 — the realignment story documented in Section 6. But the proposed budgets (upper panel) show the Executive itself steadily raising Convergence, so that by FY2027 it is proposed at ₱157B before Congress touches it. The proposed FY2027 distribution, in full:

FY 2027 Proposed New Appropriations by Program (NEP)
Program NEP 2027 (PHP B) Share of proposal
Network Development Program 176.6 27.5%
Convergence and Special Support Program 157.3 24.5%
Flood Management Program 103.5 16.1%
Asset Preservation Program 76.5 11.9%
Support to Operations 51.6 8.0%
Bridge Program 44.4 6.9%
General Administration and Support 18.1 2.8%
Local Program 14.6 2.3%

6.3 Inside the Proposal: The Biggest Line Items

Applying the same granular lens to the FY 2027 proposal shows what the Executive is prioritising within the programs. The largest proposed items are a telling mix of the national works Congress usually trims and the district-oriented items it usually adds.

The single largest proposed item is By-Pass & Diversion Roads (₱127B) — a national Network Development line that Congress has historically cut by the most (recall the ₱94B cumulative reduction above). Right behind it is BIP – Access Roads to Public Buildings (₱106B), a Convergence item of exactly the type Congress historically adds. The two big flood-mitigation lines return at ₱63B and ₱41B. In other words, the FY 2027 NEP re-proposes a large national road-and-flood program — much of which the legislature has a track record of trimming in favour of district items — setting up the same proposal-versus-enactment tug-of-war at the item level that the rest of this report documents at the program and district levels.

6.4 By District Engineering Office: The Proposed Distribution

Having seen how Congress has historically built up district budgets, it is worth turning the same geographic lens on the FY 2027 proposal. Its starting distribution across operating units is strikingly centralized — a reminder that the district-level build-up documented above happens after the proposal, not in it.

Of the ₱642.6B proposed for FY 2027, ₱510.0B (79%) sits in the Central Office and only ₱129.7B (20%) is distributed across the 198 district engineering offices (the small remainder is in regional and other units). That 79/20 split is the raw material Congress works on: the district-level build-up that defines DPWH's budget politics happens later, in the move from proposal to enacted law.

At proposal stage the Central Office has held the overwhelming share of new appropriations every year — typically 75-85% — because the Executive budgets most district projects centrally and lets the release-and-realignment machinery distribute them. The FY2027 proposal (79% central) is squarely in that pattern.

Which districts fare best in the proposal? Even within the 20% that is pre-allocated to named districts, the FY2027 NEP is concentrated: the top office is proposed ₱3.5B while the median district gets a fraction of that.

The offices proposed the most in FY2027 — Bulacan 2nd (₱3.5B), Metro Manila 3rd (₱2.9B), Nueva Ecija 1st (₱2.8B) — are a mix of high-population and infrastructure-heavy districts. But the more important point for scrutiny is the gap between this proposed geography and the enacted one: as the realignment analysis above shows, Congress adds heavily to district offices during deliberations, so the enacted distribution of DPWH money will look very different from this proposal.

7 The Line-Item Vetoes: 2019 and 2025

Twice in this window the President reached past Congress's realignments and struck enacted amounts out of the DPWH budget by line-item veto — in FY2019 (₱95.4B) and again in FY2025 (₱26.1B). In both years the pattern was the same: Congress inflated the proposal (heavily in 2019's Local Program, and in 2025's Convergence and Flood programs), and the President then vetoed a large block of it, almost all from the Central Office. The enacted GAA used throughout this report is the post-veto figure in both years.

7.1 The 2019 Veto (₱95.4B)

In FY2019, Congress raised the DPWH's New Appropriations only modestly in aggregate (from a ₱544.5B proposal to a ₱549.4B legislated total) but heavily reallocated the money — above all into the Local Program. The President then exercised line-item vetoes worth ₱95.37B, almost all of it from that program, bringing the enacted GAA down to ₱454.0B (the NEP-to-GAA dip visible back in Section 1). The three stages below are what the President proposed (NEP), what Congress legislated (the pre-veto total), and what was finally enacted after the line-item veto.

The veto was overwhelmingly a Local Program event: only that program (plus token amounts in the two overhead lines) shows a legislated (pre-veto) bar towering over the enacted level. Unpacking the vetoed line items by type of work and by engineering office shows where the realigned money had been parked:

FY2019 DPWH: proposed, legislated (pre-veto), vetoed, and enacted (post-veto) --- PHP billions
Program Proposed (NEP) Legislated (pre-veto) Vetoed Enacted (post-veto)
General Administration and Support 10.5 12.9 0.3 12.6
Support to Operations 50.0 31.9 0.5 31.5
Asset Preservation Program 59.0 45.5 0.0 45.5
Network Development Program 122.9 95.3 0.0 95.3
Bridge Program 33.7 24.3 0.0 24.3
Flood Management Program 114.3 90.7 0.0 90.7
Local Program 119.9 218.4 94.6 123.9
Convergence and Special Support Program 34.3 30.3 0.0 30.3
DPWH TOTAL 544.5 549.4 95.4 454.0
FY2019 vetoed line items, by type of work
Activity Vetoed (PHP B) Share of veto
Local Roads 40.27 42.2%
Flood Control Structures / Facilities 22.05 23.1%
National Roads 15.89 16.7%
Multipurpose / Facilities 10.43 10.9%
Local Bridges 2.34 2.5%
Drainage / Protection Works 1.99 2.1%
National Bridges 1.27 1.3%
Support to Operations 0.46 0.5%
General Administration and Support 0.35 0.4%
Water Supply 0.25 0.3%
School Buildings 0.08 0.1%

7.2 The 2025 Veto (₱26.1B)

FY2025 repeated the pattern on a smaller scale. Congress raised the DPWH proposal sharply — from a ₱898.9B NEP to a ₱1,113.8B legislated total, a +₱215B insertion — and the President then vetoed ₱26.1B, bringing the enacted GAA to ₱1,087.7B. Where 2019's veto fell on the Local Program, 2025's landed squarely on the two programs most associated with discretionary spending: Convergence and Special Support (₱18.0B vetoed) and Flood Management (₱7.5B).

The vetoed amounts fell on three programs, and — as in 2019 — almost entirely on centrally-held appropriations:

As in 2019, the veto was overwhelmingly a Central Office event — about ₱25.1B (96%) of the ₱26.1B struck was drawn from centrally-held appropriations, with only token amounts removed from named district offices. The recurring story is the same across both years: the largest discretionary build-ups are inserted centrally during deliberations, and it is there that the veto pen, when used, falls.

8 DPWH and the Unprogrammed Appropriations

The Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) is a standby fund that may only be released when revenue collections exceed targets or new financing is secured. Because releases happen outside the regular program structure, they are harder to track — and the DPWH's draw on the UA has become a focus of scrutiny, as a number of flood-control projects later flagged as questionable were reportedly financed through this route. The table records allotments released (the spending authority granted) and obligations (amounts actually committed); obligation data before 2013 could not be sourced, and FY2015-2017 carried no UA releases to the DPWH at all.

After a decade of negligible draws, UA releases to the DPWH surged from ₱16B in 2022 to ₱89B in 2023 and ₱245B in 2024 — the latter alone roughly a quarter of the department's entire regular budget that year. Yet a large share of these allotments went unobligated (about 54% utilised in 2024, 50% in 2025), which — alongside the project-level findings reported elsewhere — is exactly the kind of pattern that merits questioning at the hearings.

DPWH releases from the Unprogrammed Appropriations, PHP billions
FY Allotments (B) Obligations (B) Utilization
2011 0.81 – –
2012 0.02 – –
2013 0.00 0.00 –
2014 0.04 0.04 99%
2015 0.00 0.00 –
2016 0.00 0.00 –
2017 0.00 0.00 –
2018 11.45 7.63 67%
2019 0.01 0.01 100%
2020 1.84 1.80 97%
2021 1.36 1.31 96%
2022 16.26 15.11 93%
2023 89.33 51.72 58%
2024 244.74 132.19 54%
2025 59.08 29.62 50%

9 Notes

On coverage. The Section 1 series is intentionally left with gaps where the physical documents have not yet been encoded; points mark observed years. The by-operating-unit data now runs from the FY2014 budget through FY2026, so the department-wide comparisons span the 16th through 20th Congresses and seven House Speakers (see the Speaker table in the operating-unit section). The district-office deep-dives center on the Duterte and Marcos administrations (FY2017 onward — ten budgets, 2019 included), though the realignments-by-Congress chart reaches back to the 16th Congress (the three Aquino-era budgets) for context. The FY2019 figures use the enacted, post-veto GAA; the ₱95.4B line-item veto that year is isolated in its own chart and section.

On the 2019 GAA. The GAA figures throughout are the enacted, post-veto levels (they reconcile to the Office-of-the-Secretary totals in Section 1). "Legislated (pre-veto)" reconstructs what Congress passed by adding the vetoed amounts back to the enacted GAA. Because of this, every 2019 realignment figure in this document reflects the combined effect of Congress's reallocation and the President's veto, not Congress alone; the veto section, the Central-vs-District veto chart, and the grey segments in the realignments-by-Congress chart isolate the veto and recover Congress's pre-veto intent.

On the Unprogrammed Appropriations. UA obligation data before 2013 could not be sourced; FY2015-2017 had no UA releases to the DPWH. These realignments are simply the arithmetic NEP-to-GAA difference and are not, on their own, evidence of irregularity.