Billions of pesos in senators’ preferred infrastructure projects were regularly incorporated into the proposed national budget without any formal submission or filing protocol within the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), according to former agency head Manuel Bonoan.
In a judicial affidavit submitted to the Sandiganbayan, Bonoan disclosed that the DPWH operated an ad hoc arrangement known as the “Senate Leadership Fund,” which lacked standard administrative rules for receiving project proposals from lawmakers.
Under this setup, senators were not required to personally submit or sign off on their project requests. Proposals could be turned over by congressional aides or representatives to various high-ranking DPWH officials.
In cases where project lists arrived without an official cover letter, agency officials would determine the source and manually write the senator’s name on the document.
“Since the ‘Senate Leadership Fund’ is included as an ad hoc funding availment, there is no official process or procedure in receiving lists of projects from the Senators,” Bonoan stated in his judicial affidavit filed before the Sandiganbayan.
“Some Senators submit their list of projects with a covering letter addressed to me, while some were submitted by their authorized representative or staff,” he added.
The internal facility operated under an annual ceiling of ₱24 billion, allocating a baseline of ₱500 million per senator, while key legislative leaders and major committee chairs could receive ₱1 billion or more.
According to Bonoan, lawmakers utilized ₱13.29 billion from the fund for the 2024 fiscal year, with usage rising to approximately ₱21 billion for the 2025 budget cycle, which saw full participation from all incumbent senators.
“For what I know all incumbent Senators in 2024 availed of the ‘leadership fund’ for FY 2025,” Bonoan said.
Bonoan clarified that the fund did not distribute direct cash to lawmakers, but instead served as a mechanism to integrate their priority infrastructure projects into the DPWH’s official budget submission.
All proposals were routed through the office of former Planning Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral for technical review, validation, and cost evaluation to ensure alignment with agency standards and designated spending caps.
Approved items were then embedded into the DPWH’s annual budget proposal before being submitted to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for inclusion in the executive branch’s National Expenditure Program (NEP).
According to the former DPWH chief, the mechanism was established following extensive congressional adjustments to the agency’s 2023 budget proposal.
The fund was intended to capture legislative priorities early during executive preparation to minimize subsequent alterations by lawmakers during budget deliberations.
“It was formulated as an internal ad hoc working fund for the purpose of deterring the senators from meddling with the President’s budget,” Bonoan said.
Despite managing tens of billions of pesos in public infrastructure funds each year, the mechanism functioned entirely without formal filing guidelines or proponent documentation requirements.