Veto cuts DPWH budget by P95.4 B

MANILA, Philippines — President Duterte’s veto of infrastructure fund reallocations made by the House of Representatives has reduced the 2019 budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) by P95.4 billion to P454 billion.

“The President exercised a direct veto on those realignments. That means the affected appropriations were deleted from the budget. Since the agency involved is the DPWH, the veto means the department’s funding for this year has been substantially reduced,” a member of the House appropriations committee said yesterday.

He said all of the vetoed P95.4 billion in funding items and their corresponding projects belonged to the DPWH.

The source provided a document showing a summary of the appropriations the President scrapped from the DPWH budget. The rejected items amounted to a total of P95,374,214,000.

Of that amount, P42.6 billion was for local roads and bridges, P24 billion for flood control and drainage, P17.2 billion for national roads and bridges, P10.5 billion for buildings and other structures, P251.3 million for water supply systems, P460 million for support to operations and P350 million for general administration expenses.

Based on his veto message to Congress, the President deleted these appropriations because they were not among the DPWH’s “programmed priorities.”

According to appropriations committee chairman Rolando Andaya Jr., the House reallocated infrastructure funds among congressional districts to make the distribution “equitable.”

He said the original allocation contained in Duterte’s budget proposal was “not fair” to some districts, which received small allotments, while other constituencies were given billions.

He blamed the previous House leadership for the “inequitable” sharing of infrastructure funds.

A list released by Andaya showed that former speaker Pantaleon Alvarez received the biggest allocation of P8.4 billion. At the bottom was Basilan with P408 million.

Alvarez was followed by Emmanuel Madrona of Romblon, whose district was allotted P6.8 billion; Lawrence Fortun of Agusan del Norte, P6 billion; Joey Salceda of Albay, P5.7 billion; JB Bernos of Abra, P5.6 billion; Edgar Sarmiento of Samar, P5.2 billion; Mercedes Cagas of Davao del Sur, P4.1 billion; Karlo Nograles of Davao City, P4.1 billion; Rodolfo Fariñas of Ilocos Norte, P4 billion; and Franz Alvarez of Palawan, P3.7 billion.

Nograles was appropriations committee chairman under the Alvarez-led House, while Fariñas was majority leader.

Salceda’s Albay colleague Edcel Lagman, who was among 24 House members Alvarez defunded in 2018 when he was speaker, received a P3.5-billion allocation, while Alvarez’s former close friend and now political foe Antonio Floirendo Jr. of Davao del Norte’s second district had P2.1 billion. Some 167 districts were allotted at least P1 billion.