More than ₱180 billion in public funds may have been siphoned off through over 600 nonexistent flood control projects since 2016, Senate President Pro Tempore Ping Lacson said on Wednesday, warning that the figure excludes money wasted on substandard structures.
Lacson said he and Senator Win Gatchalian, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, derived the estimate after reviewing around 10,000 inspected projects — with over 600 confirmed as ghost or entirely nonexistent.
“Imagine, ₱180 billion kaagad ang outright talagang nawala dahil ghost. Hindi pa natin nabibilang ang substandard,” he said.
The DPWH flood control program spans roughly 30,000 projects. With 5–6% of inspected samples turning out to be ghost, Lacson and Gatchalian projected that applying the same ratio across all projects could mean losses exceeding ₱180 billion.
Lacson, who also chairs the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, said the investigation had uncovered only a fraction of potential anomalies. He noted that the ₱110 million returned by dismissed DPWH Bulacan First District Engineer Henry Alcantara — with another ₱200 million expected — was “a drop in the bucket.”
To curb irregular flood control allocations, Lacson said the Senate has tightened transparency mechanisms in the budget process. Reforms include livestreaming the period of amendments and publicly releasing each senator’s individual budget proposals to prevent “allocables,” leadership funds, and other forms of pork in the 2026 budget.
“Hindi uubra (ang allocables) kasi ginawa naming transparent… Dati kasi ang kalakaran, mag-submit ng kapirasong papel sa chairman. Hindi ito nakalantad,” Lacson said, emphasizing that all individual amendments were read on the floor, including eleven submissions read by Gatchalian.
Both chambers also agreed to limit bicameral conference committee discussions strictly to disagreeing provisions to prevent the insertion of “alien” items. Gatchalian will upload all amendments and supporting documents to the Senate’s transparency portal.
“Mas simple ’yan at puwede naming gawing transparent ’yan… All the way hanggang bicam gagawing transparent, hanggang enrolled bill gagawin naming transparent,” Lacson said.