LTO receives initial 108k plates for backlog, 15.9M to go

The issue with the supply of license plates seems to be a never-ending story for the Land Transportation Office (LTO) and has been going on since the last two presidential administrations. However, the LTO may have already started to finally put an end to this nightmare.

Just recently, Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary, Jaime Bautista, together with LTO officer-in-charge Atty. Hector Villacorta, received the initial shipment of 108,400 motor vehicle plates that are ready for stamping from Trojan-Tonnjes Joint Venture – the winning bidder to supply the nation’s license plate requirements.

PHP 1.4B savings

According to Bautista, the government was able to save PHP 1.4 billion of tax payer’s money because the plates only cost PHP 3.8 billion versus the initial PHP 5.2 billion.

“These [license] plates, our procurement cost us almost PHP 3.8 billion. In fact, we're very happy to inform everyone that because of transparent bidding, we are able to generate savings based on the approved estimate of PHP 5.2 billion. So, we were able to achieve PHP 1.4 billion in savings through this procurement,” said Bautista.

16 million backlog

While this is definitely good news, we might not see the end of the license plate backlog within the next few months. According to DOTr, the total number of blank plates acquired by the agency from Trojan is 16,040,640 to address the ongoing backlog by the LTO.

Trojan, is committed to delivering a minimum of 60,000 blank plates to the LTO weekly. If our math is right, this means the LTO still expects 15,932,240 blank plates and with Trojan's 60,000 deliveries every week, the backlog should be over in about 5 years - that is if the LTO can keep up with the stamping of plates.