If you are going to apply for or renew your driver’s license, you are NOT in luck: because the LTO is facing a shortage in license cards, its solution to the problem is to print all driver’s licenses on paper for the meantime.

“Ang forecast ng LTO is completely mauubos iyong inventory on hand ng mga office by the last week of April,” LTO chief Jose Arturo Tugade said in a press conference, where he noted that LTO offices nationwide are left with only 147,000 license cards.

“The solution is to use a temporary driver’s license document. We will be using paper for the temporary driver’s license. We will be printing the official receipt of the driver’s license. And on the official receipt of the driver’s license, there will be a unique QR code… That is one way for the law enforcers to validate whether or not the official receipt is legitimate and whether it is authentic,” Tugade adds.

As much as you’re probably scratching your head as to why this is happening, Tugade said that as early as November 2022, the inventory for license cards was already at a critical level. While it was supposed to procure additional cards last January, this was put on hold by a department order, where all procurements costing Php 50 million and above should be conducted by the DOTr. Tugade explained that the purchasing of 5.2 million new cards will cost them Php 249 million. Tugade claims that they tried to have the department order reconsidered due to the urgency of the matter, but it was not granted.

This is not the first time that LTO had to issue a paper driver’s license: back in 2015, LTO extended the validity of temporary driver’s licenses to 150 days due to a shortage in the inventory of cards.