Car industry players dispute LTO’s claim on late license plates

Stakeholders in the automotive sector on Monday disagreed with the statement of the head of the Land Transportation Office (LTO), blaming car dealers and buyers for their failure secure license plates for newly registered vehicles.

Richie Javier, general manager of Ford Global City and Ford Manila, said it was unfair to place the blame only on car dealers and new owners since the backlog was also caused by LTO when it was closed during the Christmas break and did not process registrations for the whole month of January until mid-February as it upgraded its system.

"They couldn't process any registrations because the system was not up, and naturally, it will create a backlog," Javier told GMA News Online.

"The backlog started last year from their end. They just have a [small] number of people to work on the huge volume of plates, registrations from dealerships nationwide," he added.

On Monday afternoon, LTO chief Aljun Tan defended anew the “no-registration, no-travel” policy, saying that his office was never late in issuing plates for newly-registered vehicles.

Under the new LTO rule, which took effect on April 1, the owner of the unregistered vehicle will be fined with P10,000. A separate P1,000 fine will also be meted out to those who will be caught driving the unregistered vehicle.

If the car owner or driver will be able to present a Certificate of Registration and an Official Receipt (OR) to prove that the vehicle is duly registered, he will still be fined of P5,000 for failure to attach the vehicle's plate.

While the LTO has made more license plates available, there are still a huge number of vehicles without plates, Rommel Gutierrez, Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. (CAMPI) president, said in another interview.

"There has been a substantial increase in the supply of LTO plates since the early part of this year," Gutierrez told GMA News Online.

"With thousands of vehicles with pending license plates since last year, it has become a challenge for both LTO and dealers in claiming and releasing of plates made available just recently," he added.

"We hope that the aim of releasing all pending plates and the release of plates at the same time as the issuance of OR/CR for newly-purchased vehicles will be realized soon," Gutierrez noted.

In an e-mailed statement, the Automobile Association Philippines (AAP) has slammed the “no plate-no travel” policy of the LTO, saying that it penalized the wrong person since it was the car dealers who are supposed to secure the license plates from the LTO for their new car buyers.

AAP vice president Juan B. Angeles said the LTO should compel car dealers to supply the license plates to their customers if the government could prove that dealers had been remiss in making these available.

“There is no need for the brand new motor vehicle owners to be held liable for the lapses of erring dealers,” he said. “The LTO should instead go after old vehicles being driven on public roads without license plates.”

Angeles said that if the LTO insisted on penalizing new car buyers with its “no plate-no travel” policy, consumers could be discouraged from buying brand new cars and the auto industry sales could take the hit.

Citing a report from CAMPI and the Truck Manufacturers Association (TMA), sales in February reached a record-breaking 20,663 units, which is 23 percent higher than the 16,859 units sold in the same month last 2014 and 11 percent higher than the January volume of 18,662 units.

For this year, CAMPI forecasts sales in 2015 to reach a total of 310,000 units, a 15 percent growth over the 269,058 units sold in 2014.  —NB, GMA News