Senators to NEDA, PSA: Where’s our national ID?

MANILA, Philippines — Where is the national ID?

This was the question posed by some senators to officials of the National Economic and Development Authority and Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) during the Senate public hearing on the agencies’ proposed budget for 2024 presided over by Sen. Sonny Angara.

Angara, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, asked those present at the public hearing who already have their national IDs as he has yet to get his.

“Who has an ID in this room? We don’t have it. How do we know that we can have our national ID that is ready to be downloaded?” he asked, noting that the PSA is expected to complete all the physical national IDs by September 2024.

For his part, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian lamented that while identification has been expanded to accept barangay clearance, PWD and senior citizens IDs, the cleaning process of these cards is still not regular as not all LGUs clean up their database.

“The most logical is to use a national ID. The original intention of the national ID is to have foolproof and universal ID that everyone can use. It is high tech, based on biometrics and no one can replicate,” Gatchalian added. “I understand that there is a problem in producing and delivering the cards and also giving ID to the constituents.”

PSA chief Dennis Mapa said about 81 million Filipinos have already registered with the national ID, with 39.7 million physical IDs delivered to the owners while 40.8 million or half of those registered have digital or e-Phil ID.

The PSA official said the digital national ID could still be used in some transactions like banks. He noted that there are three modes to produce national IDs – physical cards, printed on paper and in cellular phones.

Gatchalian said the national ID is not yet accepted at the Land Bank of the Philippines even though they are the government bank.

Mapa said they have coordinated and requested Landbank branches to honor national IDs in bank transactions.

For delivery

The government expects to complete delivery of the physical ID cards of those who have registered with the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) by September next year, the PSA said.

“Based on their schedule as they presented to us, they will clear everything by September 2024,” Mapa said, noting that the PSA has registered 81 million Filipinos in the national ID system or 81 percent of the country’s population aged five years and above.

While the ePhilID is temporary, he said this is already being used and accepted by banks for opening basic deposit accounts. “The commitment of course is that eventually, we will deliver the physical card,” Mapa said.

He attributed the delay in the delivery of physical cards to the spike in registration particularly in 2021, when the number of registrations reached up to 250,000 per day while printing facilities can only produce 80,000 cards per day. “The adjustment really is to increase the capacity of printer.”

He concluded that the final goal is to have all Filipinos registered with the PhilSys and to provide them with the ID. – Louella Desiderio