40 million national IDs issued

CEBU, Philippines —  More than 40 million physical and digital versions of the Philippine IDs (PhilID) have been issued by the government, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said.

In a statement, the PSA said it has delivered and issued a combined 40,869,141 PhilIDs and ePhilIDs to registered persons nationwide.

Of the total, 22,585,547 physical PhilIDs were delivered as of Jan. 20 of this year.

Meanwhile, 18,283,594 ePhilIDs were issued as of Jan. 25, of this year.

Earlier, the PSA said it was aiming to issue a total of 50 million physical and digital national IDs within 2022.

Of the 50 million target for last year, 30 million are physical ID cards, while 20 million are digital versions of the national ID.

The PhilID and ePhilID have the same functionality and validity.

“More and more Filipinos can utilize their PhilIDs and ePhilIDs in various transactions in the government and private establishments,” PSA Undersecretary Dennis Mapa said.

The PSA said the production and delivery of the PhilIDs resulted from the collaborative effort with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and Philippine Postal Corp.

In addition, the PSA started the pilot implementation of the downloadable ePhilID, allowing registered individuals to download a PDF copy of their ePhilID on their mobile devices.

“As we continue to implement PhilSys (Philippine Identification System), we remain steadfast in our commitment to fast-track the printing of PhilIDs in parallel to the issuance of ePhilIDs,” Mapa said.

“We assure that there is a card allocated for all registered persons and that they will still receive their PhilIDs even if they claim their ePhilIDs,” he said further. — Philippine Star News Service, JMD (FREEMAN)