MANILA, Philippines -- The Department of Transportation and Communication (DoTC) and the former chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) has come out to defend anew the controversial National Broadband Network (NBN) project.

In a televised press conference, DoTC Secretary Leandro Mendoza reiterated that the project has gone through the evaluation of the CICT and the DoTC, and eventually the National Economic Development Authority-Investment Coordination Committee (NEDA-ICC).

Also present during the press conference was DoTC Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III and former CICT chairman Ramon Sales who has resigned from his post due to "health reasons."

The press conference was held after Rodolfo "Jun" Lozada Jr., the key witness in the Senate inquiry into the national broadband network controversy, said he was tapped by the former National Economic Development Authority Director General Romulo Neri as technical consultant to the NBN project.

Lozada revealed during the Senate inquiry that former Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos had allegedly brokered the NBN deal.

Mendoza said that he was surprised why Lozada was tapped as a consultant who had direct access to the ZTE and Amsterdam Holdings Inc. officials.

"It should have been CICT and DOTC," Mendoza said.

DoTC said that the cost of the project increased to $329 million because it had a bigger coverage of the country, and was using a different technology, said Formoso, as he explained how the project had increased from an earlier cost of $262 million to $329 million.

Formoso stressed that the NBN deal went through an infrastructure group of the NEDA, apart from a technical group of the DoTC and the CICT.

"I've never met Lozada," Formoso said. "So I really don't know where he comes in."

Lozada has said that he does not know how the contract price of the ZTE deal has increased from the base price of $132 million when he first saw the project proposal.

Sales said that Lozada might have been a personal, independent, third-party consultant of Neri. "That is what I suspect as his role in Neda," added Sales.

Read the Running Account of Lozada's testimony.