The Philippine Statistic Authority (PSA) said Friday the government would need to spend around P30 billion for the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) and the national ID.
“We submitted the overall budget at the NEDA-ICC (National Economic and Development Authority-Investment Coordination Committee) last May 2020, and the budget is about P27.8 billion, that is the entire budget for the PhilSys,” National Statistician and NEDA Undersecretary Dennis Mapa said.
Mapa said the budget would cover the procurement of gadgets for collecting data, hiring enumerators who will collect census data door-to-door, systems integrator, automated biometric identification system, and cybersecurity component.
The PSA official added for 2018, the government has released P2 billion for the PhilSys and allocated P2.1 billion in 2019.
The government dedicated another P3 billion for this year.
“So nasa P7.1 billion na ang naibigay lahat ngayon,” Mapa said.
“Dahil malaki ang target na mai-rehistro sa 2021 binigyan kami ng P4.1 billion budget,” he added.
Mapa said the PSA has already acquired registration kits, an automated biometric data collection system,s and systems integrator components for the PhilSys.
Meanwhile, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary Dennis Villorente said part of the overall cost of the system integrator brought by the government is cybersecurity components “para ma-secure ang IT infrastructure ng PhilSys.”
National ID system needs P27.8 billion budget
“[Around] P2.2 billion ang iginastos ng PSA para sa systems integrator,” Villorente said.
The remaining budget dedicated to the PhilSys would be for the registrations and printing of ID cards.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas would be printing the ID cards for the PhilSys.
“Ang pinakamalaking gastos is ‘yung registration process at malaking component din ‘yung pag-produce ng ID mismo,” Mapa said.
Philippine Statistics Authority said the national ID registration would begin next week. The agency aims to register five million Filipinos in the system by the end of 2020.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) identified the 30 priority provinces for the roll-out of the national ID or Philippine Identification System (PhilSys).
“After the registration of low-income household heads, the PSA will make the registration available to the public in 2021 with help of LGUs (local government units), partner agencies, and other stakeholders,” Mapa said.