SOME HAVE IT, MANY DON’T A woman shows her national ID which she got at SM North in Quezon City in July last year. —PHOTO BY GRIG C.MONTEGRANDE
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said on Friday that it has successfully issued a total of 40,869,141 Philippine IDs (PhilID), as well as its electric version, the ePhilID.
Out of these 40,869,141, a total of 18,283,594 were digital. In August 2022, the PSA said that it planned to print 30.1 million ID cards by December 2022 but the agency’s physical IDs tally only 22.5 million by January 2023.
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“The [PSA] has successfully delivered and issued a combined 40,869,141 PhilIDs and ePhilIDs to registered persons nationwide. According to the latest figures, 22,585,547 are delivered PhilIDs as of 20 January 2023, and 18,283,594 are issued ePhilIDs as of 25 January 2023,” the agency said in a statement.
According to the PSA, the production and delivery of the cards were a result of their collaboration with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and Philippine Postal Corporation.
“To complement these efforts, the PSA also piloted the implementation of the downloadable ePhilID, which allows registered persons to download a PDF copy of their ePhilID on their mobile devices,” the agency added.
The PSA has previously faced difficulty in rolling out the IDs, even resorting to printing ePhilIDs on paper rather than plastic cards.
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The agency’s original target last July was to distribute a total of 50 million IDs, both physical and digital, a goal set by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Marcos even recently asked the PSA for a third time to expedite the distribution of IDs.