No coordinates, no budget: the Senate's DPWH red flags, tested against ten years of contract records

The Senate says it will cut 295 public works projects worth ₱8.836 billion from the proposed 2027 national budget because the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) could not show the supporting documents for them. Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian announced the cut on November 3, citing a letter from former DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon that called the items "non-compliant" (ABS-CBN, GMA News). A day later, DPWH Secretary Giovanni Lopez said the department backs the move (Daily Tribune).

The cut is the latest step in a review that started in September. At a Senate hearing on September 25, Gatchalian said 7,107 of 11,395 DPWH projects in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), more than 62%, carried at least one of eight "red flags". These included projects with no coordinates, duplicated projects, lump-sum items and an unspecified scope of work (ABS-CBN).

Those red flags were applied to the 2027 proposal. This site holds ten years of DPWH contract records, so we asked a simpler question: when we run the same kinds of checks on past contracts, what turns up? Below we test four of the eight flags against 248,057 DPWH contract records for funding years 2016 to 2025.

What the Senate is asking for

According to reports by the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Philippine Star, the Senate finance committee chaired by Sen. JV Ejercito found that DPWH projects grew from 11,420 in the NEP to 16,244 in the House-approved General Appropriations Bill (GAB). It counted 6,271 projects as new entries that were not in the executive's submission (Inquirer, Philstar). DPWH was given until November 3 to submit the documents. The committee said projects without them would be removed before plenary debate.

The papers named in reports include:

• an approved program of work;
• validated geotagged photographs;
• a Certificate of Implementability;
• feasibility studies and resolutions from local governments.

Gatchalian said the Senate would upload the relevant information to its transparency portal (Philstar; Daily Tribune).

During the September briefings, Ejercito separately flagged 155 flood control projects worth ₱8.2 billion that lacked documents (Inquirer). On the NEP red flags, Dizon told senators that coordinates and other details for 6,113 projects were already in the supporting documents, and that 647 still had to be validated (ABS-CBN). In other words, a project flagged in a summary table is not necessarily a project with nothing behind it. Sometimes the details exist but sit in a different document. The Senate's September count (7,107 of 11,395) was reported by the Daily Tribune as well.

The Senate's eight red flags, as reported:

Red flag 4: contracts with no coordinates

DPWH's public project records usually include a latitude and longitude. Where they don't, a citizen cannot place the project on a map or check it on the ground. Here is how often the coordinates are missing, by funding year:

There are two patterns here.

The older gap closed. About half of the 2016 and 2017 records have no coordinates. From 2018 to 2022 the gap is almost zero: fewer than 50 contracts a year. Whatever changed in how DPWH recorded locations, it worked.

The newer gap is mostly projects still in the pipeline, but not entirely. Most of the 2025 records without coordinates are listed as "For Procurement": 4,169 of the 5,080. All of those show a cost of zero, so they have not been awarded yet and may not have a final site. Among awarded 2025 contracts (on-going, not yet started, completed or terminated), 911 have no coordinates. Together they are worth ₱34.64 billion, about 4.4% of the ₱792.73 billion in awarded 2025 contracts on file. By status, 567 are on-going, 332 not yet started and 12 completed. The equivalent figure for 2023 was 241 contracts worth ₱16.03 billion.

Among all 2025 records, the regions with the most missing coordinates are CALABARZON (625, or 22.6% of its 2025 records), Central Luzon (565, 18.4%), Bicol (436, 29.7%), Eastern Visayas (425, 25.7%) and Northern Mindanao (361, 22.7%). NCR was lower at 137 (7.3%).

Some of this probably has an ordinary explanation. Coordinates may be added after mobilization, some project types (for example, school building packages or programs spread over several sites) have no single point, and the public portal may lag DPWH's internal systems. Dizon's remarks to senators suggest exactly this kind of gap between documents and summary data.

Red flags 2 and 6: duplicates and shared map pins

This site already runs two checks that line up with the Senate's "duplicated" and "overlapping or fragmented" flags. Our published flags so far:

Most C3 flags fall in funding years 2022 (389), 2023 (464) and 2024 (327). C5 flags are most common in 2022 (230), 2023 (116) and 2024 (85).

We also counted "shared pins": one exact coordinate used by five or more contracts with five or more different titles in the same funding year. This is not a published rule, only a count. A shared pin can simply mean a district office used its own location as a placeholder.

Shared pins have fallen sharply since 2018. Still, a few remain each year. In those cases the map cannot tell a reader where a given project is, which is the same problem as having no coordinates at all.

Red flag 3: the same title, next year

The Senate flagged projects "reappearing" from the 2026 budget into the 2027 proposal. As a rough stand-in for past years, we matched contracts with an identical title (after normalizing spacing and case) in the same district engineering office in consecutive funding years:

These are not duplicates by themselves. Many works are funded in phases or continue across years under the same name. A road widening or a river dike may legitimately run for several seasons. What the match shows is where a reader would need the program of work to tell a second phase from a repeat. That is exactly the document the Senate is now asking for.

Red flags 5 and 7: lump sums and unclear scope

Contract records don't say "lump sum", but titles that describe "various" works ("various roads", "various school buildings") are a reasonable proxy for an unclear scope. Their number has dropped steeply:

The drop after 2021 suggests that contract titles have become more specific. Note that this is only a word count in titles. A contract titled "various" may have a detailed program of work, and a specific-sounding title can still bundle several sites.

What this means for the 2027 budget

Three points stand out from the records.

1. The fixes worked when they were enforced. Missing coordinates fell from about half of all contracts in 2016–2017 to almost none in 2018–2022, and "various" titles fell after 2021. Data standards in DPWH's own records have changed before.
2. The recent gap is real but smaller than the headline numbers suggest. Most 2025 records without coordinates are still in procurement. The awarded contracts without coordinates (911, ₱34.64 billion) are the ones a citizen cannot yet place on a map.
3. Documents decide the hard cases. Reappearing titles, shared pins and near-duplicates all have innocent explanations. Only the program of work, the geotagged photos and the certificates the Senate requested can separate them from real problems.

The same standard can cut both ways. Rep. Terry Ridon of Bicol Saro, who supports a "no complete requirements, no budget" rule, has pointed out that problem projects can also come from the executive's own NEP, not only from later insertions (ABS-CBN). The Senate's September count, in which 7,107 of 11,395 NEP projects had at least one red flag, was about the NEP, before any House additions.

Senate plenary debate on the budget is set for November 23 (Daily Tribune), and the Senate aims to finish its review by the second or third week of December (Bilyonaryo News Channel). We will compare the final 2027 project list against these checks once it is public.

How we did this

• Data: DPWH contract records collected by this site, mainly from the DPWH transparency portal (238,359 records) plus the Sumbong sa Pangulo flood-control list (9,698). We kept one record per DPWH contract ID, limited to funding years 2016–2025: 248,057 contracts worth ₱6,361.6 billion.
• What we excluded: One record with a listed amount of ₱10 billion or more is held for verification under our standards. 2026 records are left out because that year is still being encoded.
• Definitions: "No coordinates" means a missing latitude or longitude. "Awarded" means status On-Going, Not Yet Started, Completed or Terminated. A "shared pin" is an exact coordinate shared by at least five contracts with at least five different titles in one funding year. "Reappearing" means an identical normalized title in the same district engineering office in consecutive years with a cost above zero.
• Limits: The Senate's red flags apply to proposed 2027 budget items. Ours apply to past contracts. They are related checks, not the same test, and none of our counts reproduces the Senate's figures.
• Full rule descriptions are on the methodology page.

Right of reply

DPWH, its district engineering offices and any contractor connected to these records 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

• Riverbank protection, Poblacion, Ginatilan, Cebu (2023) · Location Could Not Be Confirmed. Ten 2023 contracts share one exact map coordinate.
• Hijo River flood control, Madaum, Tagum City, Davao del Norte · Duplicate or Near-Duplicate Projects. Near-identical 2023 and 2024 descriptions about 294 m apart, at ₱148.47M and ₱148.50M.
• Aringay River flood control, Anduyan, Tubao, La Union · Duplicate or Near-Duplicate Projects. 2023 and 2024 contracts about 1,132 m apart, at ₱144.72M and ₱144.75M.
• Dike, Montañeza–Lombo, Malabuyoc, Cebu · Duplicate or Near-Duplicate Projects. Two 2024 contracts recorded at the same coordinates.
• Taguibo River bank protection, Agusan del Norte · Duplicate or Near-Duplicate Projects. Similar 2023 and 2024 descriptions about 90 m apart.
• Agno River slope protection, Iton, Bayambang, Pangasinan · Pattern Consistent with Contract Splitting. One of five contracts within 73 days, each just under the ₱50M threshold.
• Dummun River revetment, Gattaran, Cagayan · Pattern Consistent with Contract Splitting. One of seven contracts within 46 days, each just under the ₱50M threshold.

Data as of November 5, 2026. News reports as of November 4, 2026.