MORE THAN 3 million Filipinos have already finished the initial step of the registration process for the country’s national ID system.
“We reached 3.3 million on Day 21 (Nov. 4) for national ID registration step one,” Socioeconomic Planning Acting Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua said in a text message to reporters.
The government targets to have five million low income families go through the first step of the registration process, wherein they will be given an appointment slip to visit registration centers near their homes to complete the process. This step also includes gathering the demographic information of the applicant and securing their consent to give out their bank details, if applicable.
Based on figures sent by Mr. Chua, 88.6% of those who participated in the first step were unbanked.
The most frequent identification presented by registrants were voter’s IDs (429,174). Meanwhile, more than 175,000 did not have any form of identification.
He said the government is on track in 30 out of the 32 provinces targeted to go through the process this year.
Republic Act No. 11055 or the Philippine Identification System Act signed August 2018 provides for a single identification system for all citizens. This is seen to ease the know your customer process of banks as it can be used as the sole ID to open an account.
Only 29% of Filipino adults had accounts in financial institutions in 2019, leaving some 51.2 million still unbanked, central bank data showed. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas wants at least 70% of the Filipino adult population to be financially included by 2023.
The government expects to complete the registration and issuance of national IDs for all Filipinos by June 2022. — LWTN
