passport

A Philippine passport is a travel document and is a Primary National ID issued to citizens of the Philippines. It is issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Philippine diplomatic missions abroad, with certain exceptions. Besides facilitating international travel and conferring diplomatic assistance to Filipinos overseas, a Philippine passport is considered a primary form of identification in the Philippines, particularly because there is no national identity card system in the country. Philippine passports have been issued since the Philippines gained independence from the United States, although their pre and post Spanish history is quite unknown. Passports were ordered to be printed in Filipino for the first time under Diosdado Macapagal, to be subsequently implemented under Ferdinand Marcos. Currently, it is printed in Filipino with English translations. The passport is a popular target for counterfeiters, due largely to the relatively liberal visa requirements accorded to Philippine travelers to destinations such as Brunei, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and other APEC and ASEAN member nations. Due to this, the Department of Foreign Affairs started issuing maroon machine-readable passport since September 17, 2007. The green colored cover non-electronic passports is still acceptable until they expire. Philippine passports are printed at the Security Plant Complex of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.