Senators flag overpriced farm-to-market roads

MANILA, Philippines —  Senators yesterday flagged the allegedly overpriced construction of farm-to-market roads around the country, with Bicol topping the list of regions and resigned Ako Bicol congressman Zaldy Co’s construction company among the leading FMR contractors.

The senators lamented the extent of corruption in FMR, in addition to the ghost or substandard flood control projects.

During the Department of Agriculture’s budget hearing yesterday, Senate finance chair Sherwin Gatchalian said the regions of Bicol and Eastern Visayas in 2024 had the highest number of “overpriced” projects at 80 and 33 FMR projects, respectively, with a bloated cost of P30,000 or more per meter.

The 80 FMR projects in Bicol were worth P1.744 billion while the 33 Eastern Visayas projects were worth P791 million, all of them overpriced because of “cost overshoots,” Gatchalian said.

In total, Gatchalian said 1,653 FMR projects for the years 2023 and 2024 were overpriced by P10.3 billion.

“That P10 billion is enough to construct 689 kilometers. The money lost to corruption is enough to build a road network from Manila all the way to Aparri,” he said.

Gatchalian said there is an ongoing concreting project in Barangay San Roque, Tacloban city, Leyte allocated with a P100-million budget but covering only 287 meters, for a whopping P348,432.06 cost per meter.

Present at the hearing were Senators Imee Marcos and Rodante Marcoleta, who both smirked upon mention of Tacloban, the turf of their political rival, former speaker Martin Romualdez.

Another overpriced project is the ongoing concreting of Barangays Kidaco-San Roque in Daraga, Albay with a P46-million budget covering just 370 meters, for another staggering P124,324.32 per meter.

The contractor there is Hi-Tone Construction and Development Corp., one of Co’s firms and included in the top 15 flood control project contractors.

Gatchalian called these projects “extremely, extremely, extremely, overpriced FMRs,” as he urged the DA to implement the projects themselves or find a private sector partner, instead of giving the funds to the graft-tainted Department of Public Works and Highways.

“We don’t want this overpricing to happen again. If you cannot assure us that this will not be repeated, we might as well remove your FMR budget and realign it, instead of have another P300,000 per meter overprice in 2026, and make these corrupt officials happy again,” Gatchalian said.

Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. lamented the senator’s “shocking” findings, and said the cost per meter of an FMR project that is not anomalous should be just P15,000 per meter.

He said the DA has conducted an FMR project audit and found non-existent road projects in Davao Occidental and Zamboanga city.

But the secretary appealed to senators not to remove the DA’s proposed FMR budget of P16 billion in 2026, down from its approved P23.24-billion budget in 2025.

Gatchalian also thumbed down a proposal from the House of Representatives to augment the DA’s P16-billion FMR budget and increase it to P24 billion.

“We will not allow augmenting a budget that goes to overpriced projects. It will only add to the overpricing,” he said.

Opposition lawmakers from the House of Representatives are calling on their colleagues to scrap what they touted as “ballooning unprogrammed appropriations” that have been the source of billions of pesos in corruption over the flood control projects of the administration.

“Distinguished colleagues, these are clearly programmed obligations that should have been placed under the regular budget, not hidden in the Unprogrammed Appropriations,” Rep. Chel Diokno set the record straight in his privilege speech delivered Tuesday.

“By parking them in the Unprogrammed Appropriations, we are effectively giving the executive a blank check worth a quarter of a trillion pesos,” the Akbayan party-list lawmaker warned, noting that in 2023 and 2024 alone, Congress authorized P1.539 trillion in unprogrammed appropriations.

“This is a clear betrayal of our constitutional duty. The power to appropriate funds rests exclusively with Congress,” the human rights lawyer pointed out, noting this system “undermines transparency, fiscal discipline and, most dangerously, the constitutional power of the purse.”

“By treating UA as broad discretionary fund and allowing the executive wide leeway to release funds through a Special Allotment Release Order outside of the programmed budget without legislative scrutiny, we are surrendering the power of the purse to the executive department,” he said.

According to Diokno, what is more worrisome is that “these funds have become a fund for pork-barrel politics,” where even House appropriations chairperson Rep. Mikaela Suansing confirmed P141 billion worth of flood-control projects in 2023 and 2024 were “charged to the unprogrammed funds.”

“Malacañang, however, s a i d s c r a p p i n g u n p rogrammed appropriations completely is not doable. It promised instead the judi-

cious use of public funds. –  Delon Porcalla, Jose Rodel Clapano