President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is pushing for the fast release of the national identification cards to millions of Filipinos before the end of the year, Malacanang said Thursday.
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Director-General Arsenio Balisacan said Marcos discussed how to speed up the printing and delivery of more than 50 million national ID cards, which are intended to provide Filipino people a valid proof of identity in a single card.
“Having seen and heard the issues, we believe this can be ramped up and hopefully, we can get most of these IDs even in physical or electronic form already available before the end of the year,” Balisacan said.
“The national ID also seeks to boost efficiency, especially in dealing with government agencies where people will only need to present one ID card during transactions,” he added.
As of June 10, around 67.8 million have registered for the PhilSys ID and around 12.7 million IDs have been delivered via PhlPost.
The National ID System is part of the government’s plan for economic recovery, Press Secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles said.
In 2018, then President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Philippine System Identification Act (PhilSys Act) into law, mandating the government to create a single official identification card for all citizens and foreign residents to have a single national identification number for all their transactions with the government.
In 2021, the Philippine Statistics Authority said the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas was producing at least 70,000 national IDs a day, but has faced delays due to the deluge of registrants.