Digital national ID implementation facing hurdles

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Monday, Sept. 25, said the digital national IDs still cannot be fully implemented nationwide because not all Filipinos have smartphones.

This was what PSA Undersecretary Claire Dennis S. Mapa’s response to a suggestion made by Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa for the agency to issue digital IDs as a solution to delays in the printing of physical national ids.

“The digital [ID] is really the way to go but right now, if you look at statistics, not all Filipinos, 15 years-old and above, will have the smartphone,” Maps said in a meeting with the Senate Committee on Finance.

“And there are areas wherein we don’t have that much connectivity– island barangays, island municipalities even. These are areas, actually, that we are doing some priority deliveries because they need the physical cards,” he added.

Mapa stated that while the digital national ID or electronic Philippine Identification Cards (ePhilIDs) may be used in financial transactions, these are only temporary and will eventually be replaced by a physical ID.

The national statistician further said that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and its service providers will clear all 92 million physical national IDs by next year.

When asked whether the supplier was not following the timetable, Mapa said that it was due to a spike in registration in 2021.

“Because of the spike of registration, particularly nung 2021 wherein we are reaching about 230, 250,000 registrants per day– that’s seven days a week– ‘yung ating card printing facilities kasi can only produce 80,000 per day,” he said.

Earlier, the PSA said that around 80.54 million Filipinos or 87.5 percent of the population aged five years old and above have already been registered in Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) as of Sept. 1.