During the last three years of Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency, the first district of Davao City was the top recipient of funds from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). His son, Paolo “Pulong” Duterte, was then the district representative.
From 2020 to 2022, Pulong Duterte’s district cornered P51 billion in infrastructure spending, an amount, according to then Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co, the then chair of the House appropriations committee, that is the “largest” funding a district ever received in Philippine history.
But not anymore. In the first three years of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s presidency, the first district of Leyte, represented by his cousin, then House Speaker Martin Romualdez, received P57 billion in DPWH funds, according to budget records obtained by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).
DPWH has not made public the allocations per legislative district. But it provided the data for 2023 to 2025 to legislators, one of whom shared the information with PCIJ.
These swings in DPWH indicate that political influence, rather than infrastructure needs, determine the allocations of public works funds.
As the fourth highest government official, the speaker steers the House of Representatives’ agenda—from the bills it prioritizes, down to the issues it investigates through public hearings. It is also an open secret that the chamber’s top leader can wangle perks for his district, allowing his district access to disproportionate amounts of government funds.
Last September, amid allegations of involvement in the flood-control corruption scandal, Romualdez quit the speakership and was replaced by Isabela (6th District) Rep. Faustino “Bojie” Dy III. Still, DPWH documents show that Leyte’s 1st District was awarded around ₱6 billion, the biggest budget allocation among all other legislative districts in the 2026 budget.
The table below is based on a document that DPWH provided to PCIJ. This data is being made public for the first time.
Influence in the DPWH budget
In November 2025, PCIJ reported that Romualdez and the President’s son, Ilocos Norte (1st District) Rep. Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro” Marcos, got the largest share of “allocables,” or DPWH funds earmarked for each congressional district, from 2023 to 2025.
Then Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan, who oversaw DPWH’s preparation of the 2026 budget, said the “allocable” system was still the basis of the department’s National Expenditure Program (NEP) for this year.
On top of the “allocable” funds, House lawmakers who hold leadership positions can secure more funding, according to several former and current lawmakers PCIJ spoke with. The higher designation—from committee chairpersonships, majority and minority leader positions, up to the speakership—the fatter the premiums.
A source privy to DPWH’s planning activities during Bonoan’s term told PCIJ that Romualdez was known for submitting project requests to the then DPWH chief and then Undersecretary Catalina Cabral (since deceased), and that more often than not, these would get included in the NEP, or what’s known as the president’s budget. The NEP is the budget that is sent to Congress, which then approves or disapproves it, or makes insertions in it.
People’s Budget Coalition co-convenor AJ Montesa said that budget insertions and reductions made by lawmakers during deliberations “really tell a story of how Congress can influence the budget.”
In DPWH’s resubmitted 2026 NEP, Leyte’s 1st District under Romualdez started with a nearly ₱10 billion budget. The district with the second highest budget at that stage, Samar’s 2nd District, trailed by more than ₱3 billion.
Congress gutted over ₱4 billion worth of proposed funding for public works from Romualdez’s district, based on the final version of the 2026 budget, or the General Appropriations Act (GAA). This is the largest cut that any legislative district incurred. But even then, Leyte’s 1st District still emerged as the top recipient of DPWH funding this year.
The big budget for Leyte’s 1st District indicates that lobbying occurs as early as the preparation of the NEP, not just during congressional deliberations, according to Montesa.
Perks of presidential kin and House leaders
Presidential and congressional kin have traditionally gotten big chunks of DPWH funding. But, experts warn, the concentration of projects in any single district does not automatically equate to corruption. These projects are beneficial to the public if they are based on needs and are part of a robust plan, said Montesa.
He added: “It shouldn’t be a problem if these are really meant to target underserved areas, but the concentration of projects and budgets there might come to the detriment of the more underserved areas. So while political footholds are cemented, underdevelopment may be further cemented in the areas who lose out as well.”
Navotas (Lone District) Rep. Tobias Tiangco, who has exposed budget insertions for fraudulent flood-control projects, said budgets don’t have to be equitably distributed to each district. Allocations, he said, don’t have to be equal, but they have to be fair—”hindi siya pantay-pantay pero dapat patas siya.”
Leviste’s district got biggest hike
Batangas (1st District) Rep. Leandro Leviste, a neophyte congressman, played the budget game in a different way. Critics of the House leadership and the administration traditionally get smaller amounts of public works funds. But he claims that his relentless criticism against DPWH corruption and allegations against its chief, Secretary Vince Dizon, got him more funding for his district.
Batangas’s 1st District got the second highest DPWH allocation this year, owing to project insertions worth ₱3.7 billion after the passing of the House’s version of the 2026 budget. This is more than ₱1 billion larger than the ₱2.6-billion increase in Speaker Dy’s Isabela 6th District.
Lobbying for projects in one’s district has, for better or worse, been a common practice for lawmakers who want to “deliver” for their constituencies. Numerous district and party-list representatives have told PCIJ that they indeed request infrastructure projects for their districts or hometowns.
Leviste’s “power” probably lay in his being “maingay (noisy),” in his being “in the news,” Montesa said. “Maybe he was more willing to threaten them. He’s more unpredictable. He’s more of a loose cannon.”
In October 2025, Leviste alleged in a press conference that some DPWH undersecretaries brought in by Dizon had ties to public works contractors. He also called for the department to disclose the budget allocation per legislative district in recent years. Toward the end of the briefer, a high-ranking public works official called him to supposedly promise additional funding for his district which he had earlier requested.
“I was told in the phone call that they’d provide the funds for my district, but I should just not mess with the DPWH budget system for the whole country,” he said in Filipino in a December 2025 press conference.
He added, speaking in English: “I’m asking for extra budget for classrooms in the first district of Batangas, and on the phone I was told, ‘We will give you extra budget for your district.’ If you read between the lines, that means, ‘You don’t question our budget, and we’ll give you your budget.’”
Agency heads cannot, on their own, make changes in the budget once it is already in the hands of lawmakers. But it is common for Congress to consider and adopt the additional requests of the executive branch—or what is known as “institutional amendments.”
Among the other districts that got the highest budget bumps in the GAA are Speaker Dy’s district and Nueva Ecija’s 1st District under House appropriations committee chair Mikaela Suansing.
Congress started deliberating on the 2027 budget last Aug. 17. During the budget briefing on that day, Suansing vowed to consult with the House leadership and the executive committee of the appropriations panel on whether or not they should release the per-legislative-district allocation of the proposed DPWH budget for this year.
Montesa supports the call to release the breakdown. He said it would equip ordinary citizens with the tools to independently scrutinize the allocation of infrastructure projects.
“We only want transparency in the negotiations, in all the discussions,” he said in a mix of Filipino and English. “If the negotiations are conducted behind closed doors, the people will lose the levers [to demand accountability].”
Tiangco expressed a similar sentiment: “Why don’t we make it easy for the people to see what’s going on? Because if we make it hard for them, that means we don’t want them to know.”
Read more: A year after the flood control Sona: Probes, protests, and the President’s possible culpability
