Philippine passport

Philippine passport
The front cover of a contemporary Philippine biometric passport using Trajan font. Hatching has also been added to the national coat-of-arms to indicate correct heraldic tinctures.
The data page of biometric passports issued after August 15, 2016. Note the signature field on page 3, in contrast to previous biometric passports.
Date first issued	September 17, 2007 (Machine-readable passport) August 11, 2009 (first edition biometric passport) August 15, 2016 (new edition biometric passport)
Issued by	Philippines
Type of document	Passport
Purpose	Identification
Eligibility requirements	Filipino citizenship
Expiration	5 years
Cost	₱950 (15 working days) or RUSHED: ₱1200 (7 working days)

A Philippine passport is both a travel document and a primary national identity document issued to citizens of the Philippines since there is no national identity card system in the Philippines. It is issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Philippine diplomatic missions abroad, with certain exceptions.

The Department of Foreign Affairs began issuing maroon machine-readable passports on September 17, 2007, and biometric passports on August 11, 2009. The green colored cover non-electronic passports are still valid until they expire. Philippine passports are printed at the Security Plant Complex of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The nature of passports in Pre-Hispanic and Spanish-Era Philippines is generally unknown, and the earliest forms have been issued since the Philippines gained independence from the United States in 1946. 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.

With the adoption of the current constitution in 1987, the power of issuing passports was transferred from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the current Department of Foreign Affairs. The Philippine Passport Act 1996 governs the issuance of Philippine passports and travel documents. Philippine passports are only issued to citizens, while travel documents (under Section 13) may be issued to citizens who have lost their passports overseas as well as permanent residents who cannot obtain passports or travel documents from other countries.