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MANILA, Philippines -- A year after complying with the international requirement for a machine-readable passport (MRP), the Department of Foreign Affairs is set to release electronic passports (e-passports) within the year.
This, after the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas awarded last week the contract for the set-up of the e-passport system to the French-Belgian company Francois Charles Oberthur Fiduciaire (FCOF).
This paves the way for the issuance of e-passports to Filipino diplomats and officials starting October and to all Filipino travelers by December.
The Philippines rushed the upgrade of the previously manually passport to an MRP before the April 1, 2010 deadline of the International Civil Aviation Organization, which has also raised its standard to include electronic chips in passports.
The 64-kilobyte electronic chips would contain more information regarding the passport holder and serve as a third line of validation of the passport holder's identity.
FCOF won the contract for the "supply of a complete package of systems design, technology, hardware, software and peripherals, maintenance and technical support, e-covers and data page security laminates for the centralized production and production of machine readable electronic passport."
The company's bid of P859.7 million was below the approved budget cost of P970.5 million. It won over the only other bidder, Germany's Bundesdruckerei, which was automatically disqualified as its bid of P4.7 billion is almost five times the approved budget cost.
Once implemented, the Philippines will join 60 other countries that issue e-passports, the new global standard set by ICAO.
The government had long planned to have a machine-readable and electronic passport, but it suffered a major a setback in December 2005 when the DFA terminated its 1999 build-operate-transfer contract with Philippine-Thai company BCA International for the latter's allegedly inability to implement the project.
BCA consequently sought an injunction with the Supreme Court. But in March this year, the high tribunal lifted the temporary restraining order, allowing the DFA to push through with the e-passport project.
Pending litigation of the cases in the Sandiganbayan and the Supreme Court, the DFA entered into an interim agreement with French firm Hologram International for the temporary issuance of the machine-readable passport starting June last year. This was to ensure that the Philippines would meet the ICAO deadline.
