Palace: National ID printing on schedule

MANILA, Philippines — The government is optimistic that it can achieve its goal of printing 30.1 million national identification cards and generating 19.9 million digital IDs this year.

Press Secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles said the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has transferred to the Philippine Postal Corp. some 17.6 million physical national ID cards for delivery to the residences of applicants as of Aug. 23.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan has reported to Malacañang that in the last 11 days, the daily average number of physical cards produced at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ printing facilities is 103,000 per day, higher than PSA’s daily target. PSA is attached to the National Economic and Development Authority headed by Balisacan.

“The Philippine Statistics Authority is confident that it could meet the year-end target of 30.1 million printed national identification cards and the 19.9 million digital ID cards which are printable,” a statement issued by the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) last Wednesday read.

The OPS statement quoted Balisacan as saying that PSA is making “considerable progress” to hit the end-year target of 30.1 million physical ID cards, or 58 percent of the overall target. He noted that the government aims to issue 50 million IDs by yearend, 30.1 million of which are physical IDs and the rest, digital printable IDs.

The Marcos administration aims to issue 92 million national IDs by the middle of next year.