A Negros Oriental business leader is calling for the empowerment of Regional Development Councils (RDCs) to be solely responsible for identifying, evaluating, and endorsing regional priority infrastructure projects to minimize the practice of unauthorized budget insertions.
Ed Du, Negros Oriental Chamber of Commerce and Industry president and co-chairperson of the Negros Oriental RDC Infrastructure Development Committee, said on Sunday, Dec. 7, that his proposal calls for all regional priority infrastructure projects to have RDC endorsements prior to inclusion in the National Expenditure Program (NEP).
He also stressed the need to institutionalize clear guidelines and criteria for infrastructure project prioritization, and to strengthen RDC technical and administrative capacity.
Du said his proposal presnted at the RDC NIR 4th quarter full council meeting in Bacolod City on Dec. 4 was endorsed to the appropriate national line agencies.
“Hopefully in the next RDC full council meeting, all the national line agencies will approve our proposal,” he added.
Each line agency will submit their respective comments and feedback to be consolidated by the Department of Economy, Planning and Development, Du said.
Mandating RDC endorsement before any project is included in the NEP and institutionalizing clear guidelines will ensure that the process is more transparent, participatory, and science-based, and serves as a crucial deterrent against budgetary insertions, Du said.
“This is envisioned to ensure that infrastructure investments are need-driven and regionally relevant, reduces misalignment between national and regional priorities, and promotes accountability in planning and implementation,” he said.
“It will also minimize budgetary insertions, strengthen public trust, and build regional capacity for evidence-based planning and fiscal autonomy,” Du said.
“The ongoing public outrage over the mega scandal on the flood control ghost and substandard infrastructure projects is all noise but has left us short of solutions to put an end to a systematic disease that has long plagued our country,” he added.
This systemic issue has been caused by a highly centralized, politically-influenced model of delivering critical regional infrastructure projects in the countryside, Du said.
He warned that if this is allowed to continue, it will result in more ghost projects, substandard infrastructure, unabated graft and corruption, more inequitable distribution of infrastructure investments, and continued misalignment with regional priorities.
The RDC is the primary institution mandated to coordinate and integrate development efforts in every region of the country, he said.
However, the identification, evaluation, and prioritization of most regional infrastructure projects for inclusion in the NEP remains largely dominated and dictated by national line agencies, he said.
This practice often results in top-down project identification, selection, misalignment with regional priorities, and inequitable distribution of infrastructure investment, Du said.
At present, the RDC’s role in the country’s infrastructure development stops largely at planning and coordination only, he pointed out.
He cited that the majority of the regional infrastructure projects in 2025 and prior years were inserted and included in both the NEP and the General Appropriations Act (GAA) without even going through the RDC process.
To prevent the foregoing from happening again, NOCCI is proposing a policy reform requiring the submission of RDC endorsement as a “condition sine qua non” before any and all regional infrastructure projects can be included in both the NEP and GAA, he added.*