MANILA — At least 444 infrastructure projects worth P27.43 billion allegedly inserted into the 2025 national budget bypassed the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) evaluation process and were tagged under former House Speaker Martin Romualdez and former congressman Zaldy Co, a DPWH official testified Monday.
DPWH Programming Division chief Peter Paul Cortes told the Sandiganbayan 3rd Division that the projects had neither undergone the agency’s regular screening procedures nor been supported by feasibility studies before their inclusion in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Cortes, testifying as a prosecution witness during Romualdez’s bail hearing in a plunder case involving an alleged P7.4 billion in ill-gotten wealth, said the projects were absent from both the National Expenditure Program and the DPWH’s Annual Budget Proposal.
Despite this, the projects eventually found their way into the enacted national budget.
“So gulatan na lang?” Associate Justice Ronald Moreno asked.
“I definitely know na walang vetting po [sa projects]… walang dumaan sa amin [na supporting prior study],” Cortes replied.
The DPWH official disclosed that the late Undersecretary Catalina Cabral instructed him to enter the projects into the department’s database and identify Romualdez and Co, a former Ako Bicol representative and House appropriations committee chairman, as their proponents.
“Per record of our database, they are actually tagged as proponents. Actually, our term there is ‘inserted,’” Cortes testified.
When Moreno asked whether the projects were likely introduced through the initiative of the House appropriations committee chairman, Cortes answered in the affirmative.
The prosecution is expected to present Navotas Representative Toby Tiangco as its next witness when the bail hearing resumes on November 10.
Romualdez faces plunder allegations involving the purported accumulation of P7.4 billion in ill-gotten wealth through government infrastructure projects. The allegations remain subject to judicial determination./PN
