Manila:The Department of Agriculture (DA) has assured the public that there are no anomalies in the flagged coordinates for proposed farm-to-market road (FMR) projects. Concerns were raised after the People's Budget Coalition (PBC) identified incorrect road coordinates, which were mapped in waters near foreign countries instead of agricultural lands.

According to Philippines News agency, DA spokesperson Assistant Secretary Arnel de Mesa attributed these issues to encoding errors rather than intentional mistakes. De Mesa explained that while some errors occurred during the encoding process, the majority of coordinates are accurate.

De Mesa further clarified that the DA uses two-point coordinates, marking both the starting and ending points of a road. Mistakes were made in inputting these points, leading to some coordinates being incorrectly mapped. He emphasized that these errors were not intentional and were purely human errors.

The DA expressed gratitude to the PBC for highlighting these issues and committed to improving their processes to prevent similar errors in the future. Specific instances of incorrect mapping included a proposed FMR project in Nueva Ecija, Quezon, which was mapped in waters near the Benham or Philippine Rise, and coordinates in Cebu and Quezon that were found in the Celebes Sea near Indonesia and near Brunei Darussalam, respectively.