Aside from the shortage of license cards, the LTO also has to deal with undelivered license plates to registered car owners who have paid for them since 2015. According to a report by Philippine Star, the LTO has yet to deliver 1.797 million plates to registered car owners, which is worth Php 808.702 million.
How did COA come up with the said figure? In its 2022 audit report, the DoTR has a backlog of 2,561,629 pairs of MV replacement plates that were paid by car owners–of which only 764,514 pairs were produced by the LTO. While the backlog is high at 1.797 million undelivered plates, this is lower than the 2021 backlog of 2,561,629.
Despite the rather huge backlog, the LTO’s Plate Making Plant (PMP) was instructed by the Plate Unit (PU) to temporarily stop the production of MV replacement plates because of blank plates to cover the production of both replacement new plates for 2023.
Aside from that, some blank plates delivered by the Power Plates Development Concepts Inc.-J. Knieriem BV-Goes (PPI-JKG) could not be used because of the absence of Comma Separated Values (CSV) files which must be uploaded to the PMP system.
Other findings COA revealed include that LTO asked for a budget of Php 6.828 billion for 2023 to address the plate requirement for both new and backlogs–bit DBM only approved Php 4.783 billion. “Consequently, the target of management this CY 2023 to eliminate its backlog is still not feasible due to budgetary constraints,” COA said.
As a response, the LTO said that a procurement process for license plates was scheduled to be undertaken by the DOTr last February 2023–but did not specify how many plates will be procured.
In addition, the LTO said that it will send a final demand letter to supplier PPI-JKG regarding the missing CSVs in its delivered plates before they will explore other legal actions.
