MANILA — House lawmakers on Friday pressed the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) on its priority projects during the agency's briefing on its proposed budget for 2023.

House Deputy Minority Leader Bernadette Herrera Dy in particular flagged the agency for having unused funds when it has unfunded projects.

"Meron ho tayong unreleased appropriation na P39 billion and unobligated na allotment na P48 billion nung 2021 at ang pinakamasakit po nag-remit tayo ng overall savings na P3.4 billion noong 2021," Herrera said.

"Para po sa amin na nagkakandarapa mapondohan ang mga priority projects natin masakit pong tingnan na nagbalik tayo dahil di natin nagamit. Bakit po nangyari ito?," she added.

(We had P39 billion in unreleased appropriation and unobligated allotment worth P48 billion in 2021. And what hurts most is we remitted overall savings worth P3.4 billion in 2021. For those of us who scrambled to fund priority projects, it hurts to see us returning funds that we did not use. Why did this happen?)

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DPWH secretary Manuel Bonoan explained the agency's side, saying there were "many sources" of funds, including savings.

"Actually, one of the sources is actually there is a bidding process for projects more often than not the budgetary allocation for the project when you bid it out there are bids that are lower than the program. Inevitably the difference will be the savings," he said.

The budget briefer submitted to the House Appropriations panel indicated that for 2023, DPWH allotted P675.38 billion in infrastructure spending.

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QC Fourth District Rep. Marvin Rillo meanwhile asked Bonoan to explain "the sudden decrease of the budgets per legislative district."

Bonoan said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. "instructed the Cabinet [that] because of tight fiscal position of government at this point... resources in government should be equitable and sustainable to support the national programs."

"We recommended a formula that we will be able to be on the same footing for everybody. We call it the zero based formula and the formula considered several parameters, including population, land area, historical location, scarcity of infrastructure, poverty, climate change, vulnerability to calamities, and so on and so forth," Bonoan said.

"We ran this formula for everybody this ended up with the allocation on the National Expenditure Program for each legislative district," he added.

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