MANILA - Transport officials welcomed a truck full of blank vehicle plates at the Land Transportation Office (LTO) plate-making facility on Tuesday.

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) waited for this type of large delivery for almost a decade. The truck carried at least 108,400 pieces of mostly blank motorcycle plates.

However, the backlog on motorcycle plates stands at 3 million, and for motor vehicles at almost 2,000.

“Pipilitin mawala ang backlog with the procurement of plates, [and] at the same time improve the production.” DOTr Sec Jaime Bautista said.

The delivery is the first batch of the expected 16,040,630 plates to be delivered for the next twenty months. The new plates will fill the backlog of LTO since 2016. This figure is based on the contract with winning bidder - Trojan-Tonnjes Philippines Inc. Joint Venture.

Trojan-Tonnjes Philippines Inc. Joint Venture is the only bidder out of three to pass the procurement process. The joint venture posted a bid pegged at P3.9 billion, which is 25 percent lower than DOTr’s estimate of P5.2 billion.

Aside from the motorcycle vehicle blank plates, the project will also include supply of RFID stickers, hot stamping foil, thermal transfer ribbon, carton boxes, and plastic bags.

In 2018, the same joint venture companies bagged the license plates project under Land Transportation Office.

The operations at the plate-making facility was put to halt for weeks with absence of blank plates for them to process or print on, according to sources.

“We already talked to the maintenance provider ng plate-making machine. We will improve the operations. There are some machines na mabagal ang pag-takbo nakausap ko na sila at ang sabi aayusin na ang plate making machines natin,” Bautista added.

DOTr's plate-making facility will be printing on the blank plates as soon as the delivered plates pass their inspection. In late April, the Land Transportation warned that there will be a motorcycle plates shortage.

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