MANILA – The Commission on Audit (COA) flagged the Land Transportation Office (LTO) for its failure to address a backlog of over nine million license plates for motorcycles.
In its annual audit report, the state auditor noted a “huge accumulated balance of 9,115,374 pieces of motorcycle plate backlogs for CY 2023 and prior years.”
“The backlog on plates production, which was attributed to insufficient funds and delayed procurement of license plates for Calendar Year 2023, as well as the non-distribution of produced plates to registrants, indicated lapses in the LTO’s performance of its mandate to the detriment of registrants who have already paid for these plates,” the report stated.
The COA added that it also found 1,696,771 pairs of motor vehicle replacement plates were “still not produced and delivered” to regional offices for distribution.
The MV replacement plates, which have been paid in 2015 renewal registration, amounted to P763.55 million. Some replacement places already produced and delivered to regional offices were still not distributed or issued to registrants.
The COA recommended LTO to fast track the production of the motorcycle plate and MV replacement plate backlogs. It also urged LTO to issue and distribute the said plates to its registrants.
According to the report, PMP produced 769,711 pairs out of 2,561,629 replacement plates as of December 2023.
COA told LTO to discuss with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) the immediate release of funds to speed up production of replacement plates and motorcycle plate backlogs.
In response, the LTO said it would follow up its request for the remaining P2.1 billion fund from DBM “to completely address the backlogs for initially registered motorcycle from 2014 to 2022.”/PN
