Dominican Republic awards contract for 5M biometric passports

The Dominican Republic is set to begin issuing biometric passports in August, President Luis Abinader has announced. 

The tender for five million passport books was awarded in December to a consortium made up of three companies. Contract and production details are classified information as a matter of national security under Presidential Decree 282-23, although Director of Passports Lorenzo Ramirez has revealed that bidders were required to guarantee financial solvency and the availability of passport books to avoid shortfalls and delays in production.

The new laser-made electronic passports will feature biometric security measures, including polycarbonate materials and embedded microchips storing biometric data including fingerprints and face photos, in a bid to ensure compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards. At an event at the National Palace, Ramirez stated that the passport project is self-sustaining, with no cost to the state. 

The initiative adopts a payment-per-passport model where the supplier shoulders the costs of production and related investments. The government will only pay for passports issued to citizens, ensuring taxpayers face no additional financial burden. 

In addition, Ramirez said that by the end of this month all offices where passport applications can be made online will be enabled. 

The official highlighted a new remote data capture service, which is a biometric and photographic service, to serve those individuals who have limited mobility. Uribe said agents would arrive at that person’s residence, after they have scheduled a time, where they would take the required data, such as fingerprints, before directly sending the passport. 

Eight percent of the Dominican population, 832,124 citizens, applied for passports in 2024, a record issuance. The 2024 record is an increase of 80 percent from 2019, and the president indicated that the Directorate of Passports has the capacity to serve approximately one million people in 2025. 

The Dominican’s machine-readable passports were previously supplied by De La Rue and local partner Pastoriza SRL under a contract signed in 2017. De La Rue’s citizen identity business was acquired by HID in 2019, and HID’s citizen identity business was just acquired by Toppan Gravity.

The Dominican Republic’s national ID cards are printed on Toppan printers, according to Wikipedia, through a contract awarded in 2013 to Copy Solutions International, GetGroup and ABnote. The ID cards are also going through a modernization and tender process.

Article Topics

biometric passport  |  biometrics  |  Dominican Republic  |  identity document  |  tender