LTO plates seen ready by September

Photo by Jovic Yee / INQUIRER

Motorists can expect that as early as September, new license plates will be made available following the inauguration on Tuesday of the Land Transportation Office’s (LTO) plate-making facility.

Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said that while they initially wanted to implement a “manufacture and release” scheme for the license plates, the idea was shelved as it proved to be too troublesome.

Instead, what they would do is produce in the coming months at least 500,000 license plates before it could be released to the public by September.

The LTO has a backlog of 3.8 million license plates for cars, from July 2016 to March 2018.

The LTO’s new plant, which is part of the P978-million contract it awarded to the joint venture of Trojan Computer Forms Manufacturing Corp. and JH. Tonnjes E.A.S.T. GmbH, is equipped with seven manual embossing machines, five hot foil stamping machines and five RFID printers.

It can churn out 22,400 license plates daily. And since the plates are loaded with security features, such as the laser-engraved code, the problem of “kambal plaka” (twin plate) would also be addressed.

LTO chief Edgar Galvante noted though that since there are efforts in Congress now to change the size of license plates for motorcycles, they had to defer production for these plates. To date, the LTO already has a backlog of 5.2 million motorcycle plates.