While applying for a National ID should be easy, a number of applicants have been waiting for months–sometimes even years–just to get their National ID. It even has come to a point that some National IDs are issued on paper, and that the government is working on rolling them out as a digital ID instead. Whether you got yours or not (the author has yet to receive his National ID since applying for one in 2021), the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) claims that they have issued over 65 million National IDs.

Whether you want to believe that or not, the PSA said in a statement that out of 65,050,382 National IDs issued, 31,204,200 were delivered as of May 19 while 33,846,182 were issued as of May 20. For reference, the PSA issued over 50 million physical and digital National IDs last March.

While it is working with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for the card production and the Philippine Post Office for the delivery, the issuance of these national ID cards is long delayed–and the Senate wants to investigate on this.

According to their initial findings, the BSP is committed to delivering 116 million “pre-personalized IDs” from 2021 to 2023 but only delivered 27,356,750 IDs, or around 76% of the required number of IDs for 2021.

Considering the PSA’s optimistic remark on the issuance of National IDs, have you received yours already? Do let us know in the comments section!