Philippine 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.

The passport was 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 passports since September 17, 2007, and biometric passports since August 11, 2009. The green colored cover non-electronic passports are still acceptable until they expire. Philippine passports are printed at the Security Plant Complex of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.