The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) verified that 35.9 million Filipinos have already been registered in the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) as of October 8, indicating that it is on track to meet its goal by the end of the year.

In his testimony before a budget hearing, NEDA Chief Karl Kendrick T. Chua stated that the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the program’s principal implementing agency, expects to cover 50 million people under the National Identification System by the end of 2021.

“Our target by the end of the year is 50 million. We are confident that we will achieve that despite the challenges of the pandemic,” said Chua.

Moreover, Deputy National Statistician Rosalinda P. Bautista said that the PSA has also adopted an institutional registration strategy to reach out to individuals from both public and private institutions to register.

“In the same manner that we reach out to local government units to assist in the registration of low-income households and the general population, our efforts also extend to reaching out to middle-class and upper-class income families for them to register to PhilSys via institutional registration,” said Bautista.

Meanwhile, during its launching in March this year, President Rodrigo Duterte reflected on the advantages of PhilSys and encouraged the public to register.

“As we pursue this long overdue project, I ask every Filipino to give PhilSys a chance so that we may maximize the advantages of a universal and secure database that will make transactions more efficient and our lives more convenient,” said Duterte.

The national ID is printed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and continuously distributed by the Philippine Postal Corporation.