The Land Transportation Office (LTO) has come under scrutiny as the Commission on Audit (COA) revealed that a staggering 1.797 million pairs of license plates, valued at PHP808.702 million (US$14.85 million), have yet to be delivered to registered car owners since 2015.
According to the COA’s 2022 annual audit report on the Department of Transportation (DOTr), out of the total 2,561,629 pairs of motor vehicle (MV) replacement plates paid for by vehicle owners during registration renewals, only 764,514 pairs were produced by the LTO as of December 31.
This leaves a backlog of 1,797,115 pairs of MV replacement plates, lower by only 29.84 percent from the backlog of over 2.56 million pairs in 2021.
Furthermore, the COA observed that out of the 764,514 pairs produced, only 506,059 pairs were issued to regional offices for distribution to vehicle owners, while the remaining 258,455 pairs were still in the LTO’s Plate Making Plant (PMP) awaiting packaging.
The COA also discovered that the PMP had temporarily halted the production of MV replacement plates due to a shortage of blank plates, as they were needed for both replacement plates and plates for newly registered vehicles in 2023.
Moreover, the COA found that some blank plates delivered by the supplier, Power Plates Development Concepts Inc.-J. Knieriem BV-Goes (PPI-JKG), were unusable due to the absence of Comma Separated Values (CSV) files required for the PMP system. The LTO had requested the necessary CSV files from the supplier, but as of yet, had not received a response.
In addition to the MV plate backlog, the COA identified a backlog of 11,859,496 motorcycle (MC) plates out of the 20,509,807 plates procured by registrants from 2014 to 2022. LTO’s PMP and Plate Unit (PU) produced and issued only 8,650,311 MC plates, leaving a substantial number undelivered.
The COA emphasized that these undelivered plates reflect a failure on the part of LTO management to fulfill one of its responsibilities, denying registrants their rightful plates despite payment.
It was also noted that the budget released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) fell short of LTO’s requested amount. The LTO sought a budget of P6.828 billion to address the plate requirements for 2023 and backlogs from previous years, but the DBM approved only P4.783 billion.
Consequently, the COA concluded that LTO’s goal of eliminating the plate backlog in 2023 is unattainable due to budgetary constraints. The COA recommended that LTO expedite the production of both MC and MV backlog plates and urged the agency to seek immediate release of the necessary funds from the DBM.
In response to the audit report, the LTO disclosed plans for a procurement process to address the plate backlogs, scheduled to take place in February 2023. However, they did not specify the number of plates to be procured. The LTO also stated its intention to send a final demand letter to PPI-JKG regarding the missing CSVs in the delivered plates, with legal action as a possibility in accordance with the contract.
