Department assures public that invisible infrastructure still counts as infrastructure under revised accounting standards

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The Department of Public Works and Highways unveiled Thursday its revised flood control masterplan for Metro Manila, confirming that the majority of projects funded in the previous fiscal year will continue to exist exclusively in PowerPoint presentations, architectural renderings printed in full color, and the warm memories of contractors who have already been paid, a configuration officials described as “substantially complete” and “ahead of schedule relative to what was ever realistically going to happen.”

The Projects in Question

The DPWH’s Flood Control Division presented its annual accomplishment report to the House Committee on Public Works before a packed gallery of officials who had all, at various points, signed documents approving the projects under review. Of the forty-seven flood mitigation infrastructure projects funded in the 2023 fiscal year at a combined budget of P18.4 billion, twenty-nine have been classified as “ongoing,” eleven as “under procurement,” four as “in the planning stage pending alignment,” and three as what the report describes as “in the conceptual development phase of pre-implementation,” a classification the Committee Chair asked about twice and which the DPWH spokesperson declined to define on grounds that it was “a technical term that would require significant time to explain properly.”

The remaining project is listed as “completed.” Site inspection of the completed project, conducted by this reporter, found a drainage canal approximately twelve meters long, recently painted, ending abruptly at a concrete wall with a hand-lettered sign reading “Extension Coming Soon (Phase 2).”

“Phase 2 is in the planning stage pending alignment,” the DPWH spokesperson confirmed when contacted. “We expect to begin pre-implementation conceptual development in the second half of next year, budget permitting.”

Officials Defend the Methodology

Secretary Remigio Magsaysay-Buenaventura of the DPWH told reporters that judging flood control infrastructure by whether it physically exists in the ground was a “reductive and frankly unhelpful framework” that failed to account for the full value chain of infrastructure development, which includes planning, procurement, environmental impact assessment, stakeholder consultation, right-of-way acquisition, and what he called “the essential prefoundational work of building public confidence in a project’s eventual existence.”

“When we spend P800 million on a project that is currently in pre-implementation conceptual development,” Secretary Buenaventura said, “we are not spending P800 million on nothing. We are spending P800 million on a very detailed vision of something. The vision is real. The drainage canal that the vision describes will also eventually be real. These are two separate things that should not be confused with each other.”

Dr. Herminia Santos-Reyes, Professor of Public Finance at the University of the Philippines and Director of the fictional Institute for Creative Government Accounting, noted that this reasoning was consistent with what she termed “Schrodinger’s Infrastructure,” a governance phenomenon in which public works projects exist in a superposition of built and unbuilt states until a Commission on Audit examination collapses the probability function into a finding of irregularity.

Manila Residents React

Residents of Caloocan City, which flooded to waist height during last month’s moderate rainfall event, expressed what could be charitably described as measured skepticism about the announcement.

“Every year they announce flood control,” said community leader Maricel Dalisay, speaking from a home whose ground floor is permanently configured for rapid furniture elevation. “Every year there is a budget. Every year there is a press conference. Every year it floods. I have developed a system for raising my refrigerator in under four minutes. My children can do it in three. This is the infrastructure we have built with our own hands, for free.”

The Philippine Daily Inquirer has reported extensively on the structural gap between DPWH flood control budgets and flood control outcomes, noting that Metro Manila has received flood mitigation funding in every national budget since 2001 and that flooding has either remained constant or worsened in seventeen of the twenty-three barangays that have been consistently targeted by these programs, a finding the DPWH has called “a basis for increased rather than decreased investment.”

The Commission on Audit Weighs In

A Commission on Audit special report on DPWH flood control disbursements from 2020 to 2023, released quietly on a Friday afternoon and not formally announced in a press conference, found that of P45 billion disbursed across the period, approximately P12 billion could not be reconciled with physical infrastructure of any kind, a figure the COA described as “a matter requiring further investigation” and the DPWH described as “a presentation issue.”

“The physical infrastructure exists,” said Deputy Secretary Proceso Villanueva-Cruz. “Our records of the physical infrastructure, and the physical infrastructure’s awareness of those records, are two areas where we acknowledge alignment could be improved.”

A follow-up question about what precisely this meant was met with a twenty-minute presentation about procurement reform initiatives currently being developed for pre-implementation conceptual consideration.

Manila is forecast to receive its seasonal monsoon rains beginning next month. The DPWH has assured the public that all flood control projects are either completed, substantially complete, or conceptually positioned to be substantially complete at some future date to be announced. Residents of Caloocan City have begun raising their furniture. Their refrigerator is already at shoulder height. It is, Dalisay noted, a very efficient system by now.

Reporting on the unflooded future from The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine.

More imaginary infrastructure at The Onion | NewsThump | Waterford Whispers

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/dpwh-flood-control-budget-ghost-projects-manila/