Marcos admin targeting to issue most of national IDs by year end, Balisacan says

The Marcos administration is targeting to issue most of the national IDs by year end, according to incoming Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief Arsenio Balisacan on Tuesday.

"Hopefully we can get most of these IDs either in physical form or in electronic form already available before the end of the year and that's the instruction of the President," Balisacan told CNN Philippines.

Citing information from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Balisacan said 92 million Filipinos are eligible to receive the national IDs, stressing that the incoming administration "intends to cover those before the end of the year."

Aside from the PSA, the new administration will also coordinate with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for the release of the IDs, Balisacan said.

According to the PSA, over 10 million Philippine Identification (PhilID) cards have been delivered nationwide as of April 30, 2022.

The PSA has tapped field offices to assist in delivering PhilIDs to registrants located in remote areas nationwide.

Balisacan echoed President-elect Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s remarks that the national IDs could help in ensuring the speedy distribution of assistance to poor and vulnerable sectors amid the soaring prices of commodities.

"Yes as I said earlier, we are ramping up the implementation of our National ID system and also the digitalization in the government and with respect to the ID system, we believe that we can reduce substantially the leakage so that we can reach more people, more deserving people from the limited resources," he said. — RSJ, GMA News