Over nine million ballots for the 2025 national and local elections have been printed, a week after printing resumed at the National Printing Office (NPO), according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Based on the latest data sent to reporters by Comelec Chairperson George Garcia, a total of 9,460,780 ballots have been printed by the poll body.
This represents 13 percent of the total 72.1 million ballots required for this year's elections.
With that, the Comelec still needs to produce 62,646,420 ballots.
Garcia earlier said the poll body is targeting to print 1.5 million ballots daily to make up for the printing delays caused by the temporary restraining orders issued by the Supreme Court against the disqualification of some aspirants.
However, on Monday, Garcia disclosed that the machines were able to print 1.8 million ballots daily.
"Well, we're hoping we could still reach two million per day," Garcia told reporters.
To fasten ballot printing production, Garcia said Comelec is also eyeing to hire more verifiers, as they only have 800 personnel conducting manual verification at the moment.
"We still need 200 to 350 verifiers because they are verifying manually," he added.
The poll body aims to finish printing ballots by 14 April, or about a month before the midterm elections on 12 May.