Philippines channels India with ID system to get poorest on map

MAYALYN MAGRACIA is one of millions of undocumented Filipinos.

“Like an alien,” is how the housekeeper in Manila describes what she felt when she discovered she had no birth record.

That was over a decade ago, when Magracia hoped to find work in a factory or restaurant. Having no birth certificate made it impossible to apply for a government-issued identity card to land a regular job.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s solution to this is a new biometric system that will give Filipinos like Magracia a national identity card, opening up access to everything from government services to bank accounts and jobs.

As head of the statistics office, Lisa Grace Bersales is in charge of rolling out the P30 billion peso program, which was signed into law earlier this month.

“Everyone will be in the picture,” she said in an interview at her office in Manila. “No one will be left behind.”

The first step, 60-year-old Bersales said, will be collecting data, such as eye scans, fingerprints and facial images, from one million beneficiaries of state cash handouts in the fourth quarter. Undocumented individuals and minority ethnic people will be targeted next, with the goal of registering and assigning a permanent ID number to all 106 million Filipinos by 2022.

INDIA’S SUCCESS

The aim is to replicate the success of India’s biometric ID program, the largest in the world, which has enrolled about 1.2 billion people since its launch in 2009.

Known as Aadhaar, or foundation, the ID is used for everything from opening a bank account to registering a marriage.

In the Philippines, Southeast Asia’s worst saver, the program is key to the central bank’s financial inclusion push, which centers around using mobilephone applications and online payments systems to draw more people into the banking system. At least 10 million people can’t open bank deposit accounts because they don’t have identity documents and cards.

For many Filipinos, it’s a nightmare to transact with formal financial institutions, which require at least two government-issued ID cards and other documents. About 7.4 million Filipinos don’t even have the most basic record of identity, a birth certificate, the statistics authority estimates. A reliance on cash means many of them turn to loan sharks and pawnbrokers for loans that carry interest rates of as much as 20% a month.

FINTECH BOOST

For financial technology companies like Globe Telecom Inc. and Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, the national ID system — known as Phil-ID — is a boon in a country where 70% of the population own a mobile phone. —