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FOUR
European companies have been short-listed in the
P2.5-billion electronic and machine-readable passport
project that will be entered into by the Bangko Sentral
ng Pilipinas (BSP) on behalf of the Department of
Foreign Affairs (DFA).
A DFA
official said the government just concluded early this
month the ocular visit and verified the
infrastructure-readiness of these firms: Alma Viva, the
supplier of Italian passports; GND company; FCO company
of Belgium; and Bundesdruckerei, which had been
supplying passports to Germany for the last 20 years.
“The
e-Passport project under the BSP is expected to be
awarded to one of these short-listed bidders in the last
quarter of 2007 and the actual issuance of e-Passports
will be on or about the first quarter of 2008,” said the
source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The
implementation of the machine-readable and electronic
passport in the Philippines suffered major setbacks when
the DFA terminated its contract with the Philippine-Thai
firm BCA International in December 2005.
BCA
International won the public bidding for the
machine-readable passports in 1999 and was awarded the
build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract in 2000. But five
years later, the firm had not yet delivered and
established the infrastructure needed for the project.
In a
memorandum on December 9, 2005, Foreign Affairs
Secretary Alberto Romulo said the contract with BCA
International was terminated as the company failed to
prove its financial capability to implement the project.
BCA
sought an injunction with the Supreme Court but in March
this year, the High Court lifted the temporary
restraining order, allowing the DFA to push through with
the e-Passport project.
Sources
explained that since the case with BCA has been
overtaken by events and technologies, the government
decided to enter into an interim agreement with Hologram
International (HI) for the temporary issuance of the
machine-readable passport.
It was
learned that the supply of the green passport booklets
was only good until June this year, and part of the
contingency plan was to enter into an interim agreement
with HI, a French company that agreed to provide a
technical assistance grant to the department for the
supply of the machine-readable passport.
“Through
a technical assistance grant provided by Hologram
International, the DFA has started issuing
machine-readable diplomatic and official passports last
June 18. Regular passports will now be changed from
color green to maroon and will be issued starting August
this year,” the diplomat said.
He
stressed that the interim agreement between the DFA and
HI will be terminated once the Philippine e-passport
project becomes operational.
So far,
the DFA has issued around 450 official passports and 200
diplomatic passports. The passport booklets will now be
thicker with 44 pages instead of the previous 30 pages.
The DFA
receives a total of 3,000 to 5,000 passport applications
everyday. The new machine-readable passport still costs
P500 each, but the DFA official said the cost is
expected to be increased to around P1,000 once the
e-passport is implemented. |
