BATANGAS 1st District Representative Leandro Legarda Leviste on Thursday called on the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to release its database of proponents in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) to prove its commitment to transparency and reform, alleging that the department is hiding massive budget insertions.
Leviste claims there were ₱721.83 Billion in insertions for 2025 and ₱496.97 Billion in insertions for 2026, and that the DPWH may be reluctant to release the full data because it includes projects proposed not only by Congressmen and Senators, but also incumbent Cabinet Secretaries, Undersecretaries, and others. He clarified that these insertions are substantially the same as Bicam insertions, but hidden, as the projects were supposedly proposed by politicians or contractors instead of DPWH’s planning engineers.
Leviste raised these concerns after meeting with the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) and the Field Investigation Office of the Ombudsman to discuss files he obtained from the office of former DPWH Undersecretary Catalina Cabral detailing the lists of proponents in the NEP. He noted that the ICI told him that DPWH did not give them these files or any list of proponents.
Leviste has also been asking the DPWH for the list of Non-Allocable or “Leadership Fund” projects in the 2026 budget, which the DPWH has yet to release. He believes that full disclosure by the DPWH on where they allocated these funds will help confirm that DPWH is no longer selling budgets to contractors today.
