COA Findings On Ghost Infrastructure Projects Now Eligible For National Book Awards

MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The Commission on Audit released its 2025 annual report Tuesday, a document so extensive in its documentation of infrastructure fraud, procurement irregularities, and outright ghost projects that the National Commission for Culture and the Arts announced Wednesday that the report will be reclassified as “creative non-fiction” and is eligible for consideration at the 2026 National Book Awards.

The report, running to 847 pages, identifies approximately PHP 28.4 billion in documented irregularities across 14 national agencies during fiscal year 2024. Ghost flood-control projects account for PHP 6.1 billion. Ghost school construction accounts for PHP 2.9 billion. Ghost healthcare-center renovations account for PHP 1.8 billion. The remainder is distributed across what COA Chairman Gamaliel Cordoba described as “innovative misapplications of public funds.”

The Literary Recognition

NCCA Executive Director Rico Pineda explained that the COA report’s recognition as creative non-fiction reflects the document’s sustained narrative quality. “The report builds character. It establishes setting. It develops plot. It has foreshadowing. It contains what we in the literary community would call moral complexity. This is a work of literature.”

Specific passages of the report have been praised by literary critics. A section documenting a PHP 340 million flood barrier in Pampanga that does not exist and appears never to have existed is, according to Bohiney Magazine‘s cultural desk, “a masterpiece of small-scale existential fiction.”

Government Response

Malacanang Palace issued a brief statement acknowledging the COA report but not its contents. The statement read, in full: “The Commission on Audit has completed its annual assessment. We thank the Commission for its continued service.”

The statement did not address any specific finding. Sources within Malacanang indicated that the administration considers the report “a regular process” and will respond to specific items “through appropriate administrative channels,” which, observers noted, generally do not exist.

The Literary Community Response

Filipino literary critics have begun debating whether the COA report should be classified as non-fiction, given that many of the projects it documents did not exist. “A work about things that don’t exist is, arguably, fiction,” one critic observed. “But a document asserting that public money was spent on things that don’t exist is non-fiction, because the misrepresentation itself occurred.”

For further reading see the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Commission on Audit for the report in its original form.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/