Bulakan's floodwalls in the news: what 41 flood-control contract records show

Residents of Barangay Matungao in Bulakan, Bulacan spent more than a week in August moving around by boat, and they say the floodwalls built along their rivers have not kept the water out. In a report published on November 10, Rappler quoted the barangay captain describing dike sections that are "disconnected" from one another, and homeowners pointing to gaps that let high tide into the Triple Junction subdivision beside the Guiguinto River. Rappler counted 12 flood-control projects recorded as completed in Bulakan from 2022 to 2024, with a combined contract cost of ₱722.8 million. It said the DPWH Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office had not yet responded to its questions.

This article does not test what residents described. We have not visited the sites, and a contract record cannot show whether a wall is continuous or a drain is blocked. What we can do is set out what the public contract and budget records on this site say about flood control in Bulakan: how many contracts there are, what they cost, how far each one had progressed on paper, and where the money came from.

The short version

• Our records list 41 flood-control and drainage contracts whose titles name Bulakan, from infra years 2018 to 2025, with a recorded value of ₱2.31 billion. All 41 carry map coordinates.
• 32 are recorded as Completed (₱1.57 billion). The other 9 (₱734.66 million) were still marked On-Going or Not Yet Started in the latest DPWH snapshot we hold (January 22, 2026), and every one of those 9 was already past its target completion date. Two of them were marked Not Yet Started.
• For 2022 to 2024, we count 20 completed contracts worth ₱1.18 billion, more than Rappler's 12. The two counts probably use different record sets, so they should not be read against each other.
• In all 20 of those completed contracts, the recorded contract cost is 3.1% to 4.3% higher than the award amount, and in 19 of them it ends within 0.1% of the approved budget for the contract (ABC). That pattern is common nationwide, and it may reflect how the cost field is filled in. We explain below why it is still worth checking.
• Five contracts worth ₱425.28 million were funded from "Unprogrammed Appropriations", the standby funds whose rules the Supreme Court limited on October 20. Four of them, funded from the 2024 standby funds, were all still open in the January snapshot.

What we are, and are not, saying

The Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office implements these contracts. Separately, the Ombudsman has acted on cases over flood-control projects the same office implemented in other towns, including Baliuag, GMA News reported. This article is not about those cases. Nothing here suggests that any Bulakan record below is connected to them, or to any allegation against any person. The figures are fields in public records. Where a pattern looks unusual, we say so and give the most likely innocent explanations.

Bulakan's flood-control contracts, year by year

The records come from the DPWH Transparency portal, as published in the BetterGov.PH public mirror (updated January 22, 2026). Some are also in the Sumbong sa Pangulo public datasets, which our indicator rules use. We counted a contract if its title names the town ("Bulakan", or "Bulacan, Bulacan", the town's official spelling). We left out three records placed in Bulakan by their coordinates whose titles name Plaridel or Guiguinto.

Spending grew sharply after 2022. The contracts became larger, with most from 2023 onward sized at roughly ₱70 million to ₱97 million each, and they spread along the town's rivers: the Guiguinto, Tabang, Bulakan and Maycapiz–Taliptip. Ten of the 41 titles name Matungao, the barangay in Rappler's report, for a recorded ₱535.35 million from 2019 to 2025.

The site's Bulakan town page shows a wider count of 190 DPWH records. Some of those are matched only because a title mentions "Bulacan", which can refer to the province, so this article uses the narrower set above.

Nine contracts past their target dates

In the January 2026 snapshot, nine Bulakan flood-control contracts were not recorded as complete, although every target completion date had already passed:

Together they come to ₱734.66 million. A contract can run late for ordinary reasons, such as right-of-way problems, weather, design changes or suspension orders, and the portal's status field is not always updated promptly. The snapshot is also more than nine months old, so some of these may since have been finished. The portal's "amount paid" field shows zero for every one of the 41 Bulakan records, so these records cannot tell us what has been paid.

We cannot say whether any of these open contracts are the "unfinished sections" residents described. But the list shows how much of Bulakan's flood-control pipeline was still open on paper heading into the 2026 rainy season.

From budget line to contract: the 2023 package

The clearest budget-to-contract trail in the records is from 2023. The General Appropriations Act (GAA) for that year has five lines of ₱80 million each for "Construction of Flood Mitigation Structures" in five Bulakan barangays: Bagumbayan, Balubad, Bambang, Matungao and San Francisco. They are listed on the town page.

The contract records show five matching contracts (23CC0124, 23CC0125, 23CC0126, 23CC0136 and 23CC0138):

Five equal-sized packages awarded on the same day can simply reflect how a district office divides one river-wide program into barangay-by-barangay lots. The same pattern appears on a smaller scale in 2022. Three GAA lines (₱27 million for Bagumbayan, ₱36 million for Balubad and ₱27 million for Sta. Ana) match contracts 22CC0013, 22CC0039 and 22CC0012, each with an ABC slightly below its budget line.

One of the 2023 contracts, 23CC0124 in Matungao, carries a published indicator: it shares identical map coordinates (14.814548, 120.88075) with a second 2023 Matungao contract, 23CC0141, a ₱28.95 million revetment. Two contracts at one point may be a pin dropped at the barangay centre rather than at each site, or two phases of one structure. It is also exactly the kind of record a site inspection would clear up, given residents' accounts of separate wall sections in Matungao.

Why the recorded cost ends at the budget ceiling

For the 20 Bulakan flood-control contracts from 2022–2024 recorded as Completed:

• the award amounts sit at 95.8% to 97.0% of the ABC;
• the recorded contract cost is 3.1% to 4.3% higher than the award, and in 19 of the 20 it lands within 0.1% of the ABC;
• the gap between recorded cost and award adds up to ₱46.29 million across the 20 contracts.

Two of these contracts, 22CC0011 and 22CC0176, carry published "Awards Very Close to the Budget Ceiling" indicators. Reviewers rejected the same indicator on 13 others in this group. The rule does not run on the remaining five, which are not in the Sumbong datasets.

Some context matters here. Across the country, among 10,912 flood-control contracts from 2022–2024 recorded as Completed (with both an ABC and an award amount), 65.2% show a recorded cost within 0.1% of the ABC and 46.0% show a cost more than 2% above the award. So Bulakan's pattern is stronger than the national one, but it is not unique.

There are innocent explanations. The cost field may hold the final contract amount after approved variation orders (changes in quantities or work items during construction), which agencies are allowed to issue within limits. Or the field may simply be filled with the ABC once a project closes. The records do not tell us which. The DPWH contract documents would: the variation orders, if any, and the final statement of work accomplished. That is a question for the district office, not a conclusion.

The standby-fund contracts

Five Bulakan contracts list their source of funds as Unprogrammed Appropriations, standby funds that can be released only when extra revenue or specific financing becomes available:

• 23CC0476, flood mitigation and waterway works in Perez, funded under the 2023 standby funds (₱96.50 million), recorded as Completed;
• four contracts under the 2024 standby funds: the two Maycapiz–Taliptip River packages in Perez and the two Tabang River contracts in Pitpitan and San Nicolas, ₱328.78 million in total. All four were awarded between December 17, 2024 and February 20, 2025, and all four were still open in the January 2026 snapshot.

On October 20, the Supreme Court ruled on how these funds are written into the budget. GMA News reported that the court voided the 2024 GAA because Congress effectively increased total appropriations by ₱449.5 billion through unprogrammed appropriations. It said the doctrine of operative fact covers only irreversible programs whose beneficiaries acted in good faith, and it set conditions for future standby funds, including no lump sums. At a Senate finance committee hearing on October 22, the Senate President said the voided provisions would be removed from the 2027 budget, The Chronicle reported. The ruling is about how the budget was written. It is not a finding about any project. We mention it because it explains why the funding source of contracts like these four is now a live budget question.

What the 2027 budget proposes for Bulakan

The President's FY2027 National Expenditure Program (NEP) has three DPWH lines naming Bulakan, worth ₱100 million. They are ₱50 million to rehabilitate the Bulakan–Guiguinto via Balubad road, ₱30 million for the Polo–Obando–Bulakan road, and ₱20 million for road and drainage improvement in Barangay Maysantol (NEP pages 373–374). None is a new flood-control structure. Residents quoted by Rappler pointed to drainage and dredging, not only walls. Readers can compare every Bulacan 1st District line in the NEP and the House version on our district letter tool, which shows page numbers.

DPWH Secretary Giovanni Lopez was set to inspect a replacement floodwall in nearby Calumpit on November 9, The Manila Times reported. We covered Calumpit's flood walls in October and the Hagonoy delta's pumping stations earlier this month.

Questions the records cannot answer

• Are the wall sections connected? DPWH Department Order No. 23 (2015), cited by Rappler, requires flood-control projects to follow a river-basin master plan or feasibility study. Publishing the plan that links Bulakan's contracts would show whether the separate packages were designed to join up.
• What was paid, and for what? The amount-paid field is empty (zero) for all 41 records. Payment and variation-order records would explain the gap between award and recorded cost.
• What is the status today? The nine open contracts were already past their targets in January. An updated status for each would tell residents what is still coming.

How to read this

• The figures describe fields in public records. They are not a judgment on DPWH, the Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office, any contractor, the municipality or any official, and we do not connect them to any investigation or allegation.
• Quotes and statements are as reported by the outlets linked. We have not verified them independently.
• We do not name individuals, and no individual is accused of wrongdoing here. Single-record amounts of ₱10 billion or more are held for verification under our standards. None appears in this article. See our methodology.

Right of reply

DPWH, the Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office, the Municipality of Bulakan, any contractor on a linked record, and any reader who believes a figure here is wrong can send corrections or context through our submission page. We will update this article and note the change.

Indicator worth a closer look. Not an accusation or a finding of wrongdoing.

Related flags on this site

• River protection, Barangay Sta. Ana, Phase 2, Bulakan · contract 22CC0011 · Awards Very Close to the Budget Ceiling. Recorded cost ₱19.60M against a recorded ABC of ₱19.60M (about 100.0%). The cost field may reflect the final contract amount.
• River protection along Barangay Sta. Ines, Bulakan · contract 22CC0176 · Awards Very Close to the Budget Ceiling. Recorded cost ₱19.80M against a recorded ABC of ₱19.80M (about 100.0%).
• Flood mitigation structures along Barangay Matungao, Bulakan · contract 23CC0124 · Duplicate or Near-Duplicate Projects. Shares identical coordinates with 23CC0141. The pin may mark the barangay rather than each site.
• Revetment at Matungao, Bulakan · contract 23CC0141 · Duplicate or Near-Duplicate Projects. Shares identical coordinates with 23CC0124. The two may be phases of one structure.

Data as of November 11, 2026 (Asia/Manila). Contract records are from DPWH Transparency as published in the BetterGov.PH public mirror (updated January 22, 2026) and stored on this site. Statuses reflect that snapshot. Indicators are from the live Love the Philippines database. GAA lines are from the DBM General Appropriations Acts as linked on the site's town page. FY2027 lines are from the National Expenditure Program. News reports are as of November 11, 2026.