MANILA -- The Land Transportation Office (LTO) will start the distribution of the initial batch of motor vehicle license plates by the first week of July.
Plates that are registered from July 1 to October 2016 will be circulated by batches to the regional offices of LTO for distribution to district offices which will then release them to vehicle owners, LTO chief Assistant Secretary Ed Galvante said.
“The LTO will release the available vehicle plates simultaneously nationwide by first week of July,” Galvante said in a statement Wednesday.
“The LTO will notify the vehicle owners on the dates they may claim their plates. We ask our clients to wait for their notification so they do not waste their time going to the LTO Office only to be disappointed,” he added.
The distribution of license plates will be set by the LTO Central Office.
For the motorcycle plates, the LTO said they are still awaiting for the passage of a bill on its plate design which is currently pending before Congress.
“We will produce the motorcycle plates as soon as Congress gives the go signal. Motorcycle owners are free to use their motorcycles as long as these are registered, with their respective plates/MV File Numbers displayed,” Galvante assured.
The LTO has inaugurated its own plate making plant last April 24 in Quezon City. The seven manual embossing machines of the LTO can produce at least 22,400 license plates daily.
A total of 387,000 pieces of motor vehicles has been produced by the facility as of June 18.
The license plate backlog from January 2015 to December 2017 is at 8.2 million. The new machines are expected to produce 3.4 million plates pending since July 2016. Meanwhile, there are 4.8 million license plates for vehicles purchased from January 2015 to June 2016 under a PHP3.8-billion contract which is still subject to a Notice of Disallowance by the Commission on Audit (COA) due to alleged favoritism shown by the Transportation Department to the supplier, Dutch firm J. Knieriem BV-Goes, despite its alleged lack of financial capability.
The LTO is still awaiting the COA resolution on the disallowance. (PNA)
