Will car plate shortage finally be resolved?

MANILA, Philippines — Will the Marcos administration finally be able to end the license plate shortage that has troubled transport officials and motorists since 2016?

This is the ambitious plan of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), which is aiming to deliver millions of plates to motorists by yearend.

Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista said they have already signed a P3.898-billion contract with Trojan-Tonnjes Joint Venture for the delivery of millions of license plates.

“Hopefully this year. We have talked with a plate making plant. We will try very hard to resolve this within the year,” he told reporters in Filipino.

Bautista said that 60,000 plates are expected to be delivered weekly, or around 500,000 by August.

The DOTr said the winning contractor placed a bid of P3.8 billion for 13 million vehicle license plates, or more than P1 billion lower than the P5.2-billion estimated project cost.

“We are very happy to inform everyone that because of the transparent bidding, we were able to generate savings based on the approved estimate of P5.2 billion,” he said.

Bautista added that they are not only addressing the backlog with the procurement of plates, but are also improving production at the Land Transportation Office (LTO)’s plate making facility.

He said they hope to improve operations by fixing under-performing plate machines.

The plate making facility has a capacity of 29,000 plates per day, but is only producing an average of 16,000 plates daily.

LTO officer-in-charge Hector Villanueva said backlog will “become a part of ancient history” once plate production goes into full swing.

Bautista claimed the plate backlog stands only at 1,700 for four wheeled motor vehicles and three million for motorcycles.

The Commission on Audit (COA), however, has released significantly higher figures on the backlog.

A COA report said that 1.797 million pairs of license plates worth P808.702 million remain undelivered by the LTO.

COA said 2,561,629 pairs of motor vehicle (MV) replacement plates paid by car owners upon renewal of registration of their vehicles since 2015 have still not been released.

“The undelivered replacement MV plates and MC backlogs indicate lapses in the performance by the LTO Management of one of its mandates, thus depriving the registrants of their right to receive the plates they have paid for,” the COA report read.

COA claimed the DOTr’s target to eliminate the backlog is not feasible due to budgetary constraints.

The constitutional commission noted that the Department of Budget and Management had only approved P4.78 billion instead of the requested P6.828-billion allocation to address the current year’s plate requirement and prior years’ backlogs.

The plate backlog began to swell in 2015 when COA flagged the P3.8-billion five-year Motor Vehicle License Plate Standardization program of the Aquino administration.

COA said the contract signed with the Filipino-Dutch consortium J. Knieriem B.V. Goes and Power Plates Development Concept Inc. was inconsistent with procedures prescribed under Republic Act (RA) 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act.

The consortium had deliverables of more than 10 million plates when the notice was issued, which the LTO said would have been enough to address demand until 2017.

The Supreme Court (SC) even halted the release of hundreds of thousands of plates to the LTO when the Bureau of Customs tried to donate the plates in its custody.

The backlog eventually reached more than 13 million individual plates for motor vehicles and motorcycles in 2018.

The Duterte administration moved to narrow the backlog by signing a new P978-million contract with Trojan Computer Forms Manufacturing Corporation and JH. Tonnjes E.A.S.T. GmbH Joint Venture.

In 2018, COA lifted its notice of disallowance after the SC ruled that the appropriation for the license plate purchase during the Aquino administration was included in the 2014 General Appropriation Act under the item Motor Vehicle Registration and Driver’s Licensing Regulatory Services.

The SC also lifted the temporary restraining order on LTO in June 2016 that prevented it from distributing the procured plates.