Motorcycle owners in Davao Region can now claim their license plates 

As most of you know, the rollout of the Land Transportation Office’s (LTO) new license plates was not painless. It was fraught with delays and supply shortages from the get-go. To that end, many new car and motorcycle owners were left hanging for years on end.  

Most regions in the Philippines has a sizable number of motorcycle riders [Photo Source: Ride with Me]

Recently however, LTO’s plate number supply issue has gotten a bit better. In fact, motorcycles from the Davao region (Region 11) can now claim their long-awaited plate numbers from the region’s LTO office. Specifically, these are for the ones who registered from January 1 to May 24, 2018, and from July 23 to September 12, 2018. It took three years, but they’re finally here. This news is confirmed through the Department of Transportation’s official Facebook page. 

The LTO Region 11 office added that a representative can claim the plates on behalf of the registered owner. Just provide them an authorization letter, as well as a photocopy of the registered owner’s valid identification card. 

As expected, the comments regarding this piece of news were rather bitter-sweet. Some claimed that despite having bought their motorcycles further back five years ago, their plates are yet to be seen.  

Others had lamented that their motorcycles have long since been nabulok (rotted out) way before their plates were released. Some folks from other regions (Region 12, NCR, Region 3, etc.) have also made their queries about their plates. That said though, many are hoping that this lapse in the supply of license plates won’t happen again. 

An LTO Region 11 employee sifts through thousands of undistributed license plates [Photo source: Mindanao Times]

For those unaware of the issue, the supply of the new five-digit alphanumeric official license plates for new cars and motorcycles in the country has been a problem. There are a number of probable causes for this. First is the fast growth of brand-new cars, which reports say the LTO could hardly keep up with.  

Then there’s the fact that the LTO’s printing and procurement of these plates have some problems too. Specifically, its plate printing facility has a limited production capacity. The LTO has since requested additional funding to address this. 

According to reports, the LTO has already produced around 6 million plates as of August 2021. There is however a sizable backlog of over 10 million undistributed plates. Yes, these are ready to go, but they are yet to be received by their respective owners. 

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