LTO to release 250,000 vehicle plates next month

MANILA, Philippines — The Land Transportation Office (LTO) expects to release 250,000 pairs of license plates early next month, an official said yesterday.

LTO chief Edgar Galvante said that the first batch of plates is being distributed and delivered to the agency’s regional offices.

 He said they had to build up inventory at the manufacturing plants before the initial delivery and release to the public.

The backlog has reached more than six million license plates since July 2016.

The first 250,000 plates to be released are for vehicles registered from July to September 2016. 

These were produced in the LTO Motor Vehicle License Plate facility, inaugurated in April and currently producing 8,000 plates per day. 

The Duterte administration moved to produce its own license plates through its own plant to avoid a repeat of problems that resulted in the backlog, which started when the Commission on Audit disallowed a P3.8-billion license plate deal with Filipino-Dutch consortium J. Knieriem B.V. Goes and Power Plates Development Concept Inc. because the contract did not follow the procurement law.

The license plate plant is part of the P978-million license plate project the government awarded to the Trojan Computer Forms Manufacturing Corp. and JH. Tonnjes E.A.S.T. GmbH joint venture last year.