Kyrgyzstan state printer wades into biometric passport market with Namibia deal

A shipment of 130,000 biometric passports has been sent from Kyrgyzstan to Namibia, after a contract was signed between the African nation’s government and national printing house Uchkun OJSC.

The shipment was announced by Kyrgyz Presidential Chief of Staff Kanybek Tumanbaev.

Kyrgyzstan began domestic production of its own passports in 2023 through Uchkun, the state printing house. President Sadyr Japarov said the following year that the integrity of the country’s passports and ID cards had been dramatically improved.

Uchkun OJSC, an open joint-stock company, produced more than 350,000 passports and 400,000 ID cards in 2024, with demand in part boosted by an agreement with Russia, according to IMI.

And it’s involvement in the global market for passport issuance is reportedly growing.

Kyrgyz National News Agency Kabar reports that Ghana has also signed a biometric passport production agreement, and Tumanbaev says four more countries are on the verge of signing deals. But Hungary’s ANY Security Printing currently holds the contract for Ghana’s chip-embedded passports, and printed nearly 32,000 of them in a month earlier this year.

Tumanbaev is head of the Presidential Administrative Directorate, and has been accused of being near the center of a ring of people in Kyrgyzstan who have allegedly acquired ownership stakes in businesses holding public contracts through their relationships with powerful Kyrgyz government figures, including Japarov, by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Article Topics

biometric passport  |  biometrics  |  government purchasing  |  identity document  |  Kyrgyzstan  |  Namibia  |  travel documents