House insertions for farm-to-market roads came from DA list – spox

MANILA, Philippines – House lawmakers’ insertions for farm-to-market roads (FMRs) are not made up but come from a validated master list by the Department of Agriculture (DA), the agency’s spokesman told reporters on Thursday, October 29.

DA spokesman Arnel de Mesa said lawmakers could have taken projects from the DA’s early budget proposals submitted to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), or from the master list of the farm-to-market network plan.

“‘Yung kinukuha naman ng Congress, galing din ‘yun doon sa listahan namin,” said De Mesa. (The projects Congress inserts, those came from our own list.)

“Kaya lang kapag kino-kopya nga nila ng mga tao nila o sinasalin, nagkakaroon ng problema sa coordinates,” he added. (Although sometimes when their staff copies or transfers these projects, they make mistakes with the coordinates.)

The People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) flagged hundreds of insertions in the House of Representatives’ version of the 2027 proposed budget. These insertions, said the PBC, lack publicly available supporting documents.

Wrong coordinates, wrong copy-pasting

The PBC also flagged coordinates for some farm-to-market roads that, when plotted, ended up at sea. De Mesa said DA officials recently met with the PBC and explained that the errors resulted from “human error” in copying and pasting coordinates.

Missing digits in coordinates could result in discrepancies of at least 100 kilometers.

“Hindi maiwasan yung human error doon sa pag-copy-paste. Actually tama ‘yung project, ‘yung pagkaka-copy lang noong coordinates talaga,” he said.

(Human error in copy-pasting is unavoidable. The projects are correct, there were just mistakes in copying the coordinates.)

Meanwhile, Kenneth Isaiah Abanta, co-founder of PBC, said the meeting with DA was “a breath of fresh air.”

“We will work together with DA to correct the coordinates of farm-to-market roads we flagged that were inserted by the House, and submit findings to Senator Kiko Pangilinan’s committee,” Abante said in a post.

Abante also called for better support for the DA’s Bureau of Agricultural and Fisheries Engineering (BAFE), the agency’s arm dealing with agriculture infrastructure. – Rappler.com