Great news for our OFW or those planning to work abroad! The Philippine passport validity shall be extended to 10 years soon!
Update: Effective January 1, 2018, Philippine passport validity will be extended to 10 years as per the announcement of DFA Secretary Alan Cayetano at no cost to passport applicants.
As of now, a Philippine passport is valid only for 5 years. However, on August 2, 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law Republic Act No. 10928, an act extending the validity of Philippine Passports to 10 years from the current 5 years validity except passports for minors 18 years old and below which shall be issued with five- years validity.
R.A. No. 10928 also states that the issuing authority can choose to limit the validity period to less than 10 years “whenever necessary for the economic or political stability of the country”.
The new passport law will take effect after its’ publication in National Gazette or in a national newspaper of general circulation.
The Department of Foreign Affairs or DFA is assigned to work on the Implementing Rules and Regulation (IRR) of the new ten- year passport validity.
What are the Benefits of the New Passport Validity
The new passport law is favorable especially for the Overseas Foreign Workers who have long contract periods as OFWs no longer need to travel every five years to Philippine Consulates or come home to the Philippines for passport renewal.
The passport extension validity is anticipated to make travel abroad more accessible aside from reducing the burden of renewing passports.
The new law also decreases the workload of Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) which is assigned to issue the Philippine passports.
Start of Issuance of Passport Valid for 10 Years Not Known Yet
As of now there is no specific date when will the Department of Foreign Affairs commence to issue passports valid for ten years. The Foreign Affairs Department has still to come up with the rules and regulation in the implementation of the 10-year valid passports.
The law also instructed the DFA to make sure the passport processing system is convenient, seamless and pro-people.
We will be updating this post once the start of issuance of passports valid for 10 years is announced.
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