The Motorcycle Development Program Participants Association (MDPPA) Inc. again asked the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to speed up its registration process, as the backlog of unregistered motorcycles have ballooned to 100,000 units.
MDPPA President Armando Reyes of Honda Phils. Inc. noted that since the LTO’s move in 2014 to centralize registration procedure in regional offices—giving birth to a slew of other issues—registration has proceeded on a “snail’s pace”, leading to a steady increase in backlog.
“The lead time is too long. It takes months before an OR/CR [official registration/certificate of registration] can be obtained by the motor vehicle dealers. In the past, district offices per region can process but that has since been changed and there’s only one office per region that can process papers,” Reyes told the BusinessMirror in an interview.
“Buyers of motorcycles are commuters. They want to use [their bikes] as soon as possible. Aside from that, the market is growing and the sales volume is increasing,” he added.
The rapid increase in motorcycle sales have outpaced the registration process of the LTO, which is still plagued by human-resource issues and is still awaiting the installation of new computers and systems.
Reyes noted that, while they are in consultations with the LTO, they are requesting for a decentralization of processing to the district offices while the LTO builds up its capacity to handle the volume of registration.
The backlog of 100,000 units does not include figures from non-members of the MDPPA.
According to Reyes, the LTO has pledged to speed up the process but has yet to heed their suggestion to decentralize the registration.
He said the backlog is further aggravated by recent issuances of the LTO, like the “No OR/CR, No Travel” policy and the standardization of temporary plates.
The rules, Reyes said, tend to hamper the rapid expansion of the local motorcycle industry. “We project that the entire industry, including non-MDPPA members, to sell 1.8 million units this year,” he said.
The industry notched total sales of 1.6 million units in 2016, with MDPPA members—Honda Philippines Inc., Kawasaki Motors (Philippines), Kymco, Yamaha and Suzuki Philippines Inc.—accounting for 1.14 million units.
According to the Asean Automotive Federation Statistics, the Philippines has sold some 614,000 motorcycles and scooters in the first half of the year. This is 12.7 percent higher than the figure recorded in the same period last year and is the largest recorded growth among Asean countries.
Maybe they should add more employees to process the registration faster.