THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) announced on Wednesday that issuances of the digital version of the national ID, known as the ePhilID, have topped 10 million, about half of the target for the year.
The PSA said in a statement that the number of ePhilIDs that have been claimed at Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) registration centers is 10,126,352.
The PSA’s target is to deliver 30 million physical cards and 20 million ePhilIDs by the end of 2022.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. laid out the target of 50 million IDs — physical and electronic — in his State of the Nation Address.
In a Dec. 6 meeting with Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan and PSA officials, the President said: “Let us print out as much as we can, and then let’s issue the physical ID as soon as we can.”
The printing delays were blamed on the “late start of the flow of data and the volume of the data, which is less than what is supposed to be,” according to a statement issued by the Office of the Press Secretary on Dec. 6.
According to the PSA, the ePhilID is the digital version of the PhilID, which is a physical card. The Agency began rolling out the ePhilID in late October.
The ePhilID will soon be accessible through mobile phones, the PSA said.
Those who have registered will be able to download their ePhilIDs on their smartphones as well as their laptops through the PhilSys website, the PSA said. — Aaron Michael C. Sy