The country remains on track to attain its target to register 99.5 percent of the population in the Civil Registry System by 2024, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
At a media briefing on Wednesday, PSA Philippine Identification System Registry Office Officer in Charge Deputy National Statistician Fred S. Sollesta said this was the commitment of the PSA in the 2015-2024 Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Decade.
Sollesta said based on the results of the recent Census of Population and Housing, birth registration nationwide increased to 96.8 percent in 2020 from 95 percent in 2015.
“Even without the PhilSys Birth Registration Assistance Project [PBRAP], our registration improved. But if our intervention, PBRAP, is implemented, we are on track to fulfill our commitment by 2024 that at least 99.5 percent of the births of Filipinos are registered,” Sollesta said.
The implementation of the PBRAP is one of the major programs of the PSA, which seeks to ensure that all births of Filipinos are registered in the Local Civil Registry Offices (LCROs) for their legal identity.
Additionally, their respective Certificate of Live Births (COLBs) will enable them to be enrolled with the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) for the issuance of their Philippine Identification (PhilID) card.
Sollesta said if 96.8 percent of births are registered in the country, only 3.2 percent of the population does not have birth certificates. This translates to about 3.52 million Filipinos out of 110 million people.
In 2015, if there were 95 percent birth registration in the country, some 5 percent are not. Given the 100 million population at that time, this would translate to around 5 million Filipinos without birth registrations.
As of last week, Sollesta said LCROs have received birth records for verification through the PBRAP and reached 489,957 submissions. This represents 24.5 percent of the 2 million annual target for the PBRAP.
Of this number, a total of 360,996 have been verified and 113,991 remain unverified by the PSA.
Birth registration is part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under Goal 16 on promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Under SDG 16.9, by 2030, countries must provide legal identity for all, including birth registration. Under this indicator is a target of increasing the proportion of children less than 5 years of age whose births have been registered with a civil authority by age.