The Land Transportation Office (LTO) has assured that the first batch of new license plates in the Philippines will be issued by March 2018, allaying fears of further delays in the delivery of the motor vehicle plates.
In a news statement, the agency said it has awarded the P978.8-million license plate- supply deal to Trojan Computer Forms Manufacturing Corp. and J.H. Tonnjes E.A.S.T. GmbH & Co. KG Joint Venture.
The said group “has already been required to provide the performance security.”
“Initial delivery is expected sometime in March 2018,” the regulator said on Thursday. “The LTO assures the public that the agency is doing the best it can, in compliance with existing laws and regulations, to deliver the license plates.”
To recall, the procurement of the plates was stopped after being questioned before the courts and the Commission on Audit. This should have covered the supply of license plates from 2014 to 2018.
In mid-2016, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order preventing the LTO from releasing and distributing 700,000 license plates turned over by the Bureau of Customs after the plates’ supplier-importer failed to pay the required customs duties.
Hence, when the present administration came in a month after, “there was no budget allocation for procurement of license plates for 2016, 2017 and 2018.”