About 20 million national Identification cards (IDs) have been issued to Filipinos as of Tuesday, Sept. 20, the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) revealed before the House of Representatives.
During the House plenary budget debates on the NEDA budget on Wednesday, Sept. 21, Camarines Sur 3rd district Rep. Gabriel Bordado Jr. asked Marikina City 2nd district Rep. Stella Quimbo–the sponsor of the agency’s budget–for an update on the Philippine Identification System Act (PhilSys) or Republic Act (RA) 11055.
The PhilSys Act was signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte in 2018. However, many registrants under the measure have not yet received their IDs.
“As of today, we have completed step two of PhilSys registration of 71.7 million Filipinos and we have issued 15.2 million physical IDs,” Quimbo said before the plenary.
She then interjected that another 4.9 million IDs had been issued: “From the time we produced the briefer up until today, nagproduce ng (an) additional 4.9 million (were produced) so a total of 20 million as of today ang na-issue na (has been issued).”
Quimbo clarified that the NEDA’s target was to issue 30 million IDs by the end of 2023.
“Out of the 111 million Filipinos, ang target lang natin would be 92 million. So from January 2023 to June 2023, yung balanse (the balance) which is about 62 million will be the targe,” she said,
The Marikina lawmaker also bared the reason for the delays behind the ID distribution.
“Ang nangyari po kaya nagkaroon ng konting delay is kinulang tayo ng printer (What happened is that we had a shortage of printers, hence the delay). Moving forward, dadagdagan natin ang ating printers para matapos natin ang pag-issue ng lahat ng (we will acquire more printers so as to complete the issuances of all) IDs by the end of June 2023. Meanwhile, mag-i-isue ng PSA ng (the PSA will issue a) digital ID,” she explained.
A total of P2.05 billion of the agency’s budget will be used to fund the PhilSys Act.
“For 2023, P2.05 billion of the total NEDA budget will be spent for the implementation of the Philippine Identification System Act, a major project of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The national ID is crucial in our bid for digital transformation as it allows Filipinos to smoothly engage in government transactions,” Quimbo said in her sponsorship speech for the NEDA budget.