To address a potential passport shortage in Nepal, the government has decided to purchase an additional 700,000 passports from 'In Smart Identity France SAS'.

The French supplier, previously known as IDEMIA Identity and Security France SAS, has been providing Nepal with machine-readable passports and is currently providing e-passports with biometrics. The cabinet meeting on Friday decided to purchase the passports from the supplier entirely.

Government spokesperson and Minister for Communications and Information Technology Jagdish Kharel informed that the decision has been taken to allow the Passport Department to purchase additional passports through variations. According to the new agreement, the first installment of passports will arrive within three weeks. The number will be added gradually after that, the department's statement said.

The agreement with IDEMIA (currently IN Group), which has been providing e-passports to Nepal since 2010, is expiring at the end of December. However, the government was confused about how to deal with the shortage after new German suppliers, Veridos GmbH and Muhlbauer ID Service GmbH, said they would start supplying passports only after March.

According to officials from the Passport Department, the department has less than 160,000 ordinary passports to last until December. Therefore, to prevent the passport crisis from worsening, the department had reduced the number of daily applications from 6,000 to 1,000. Department officials said that with the new agreement, this crisis has now been resolved. Tirtharaj Aryal, Director General of the department, said that the current supply is expected to meet the demand until the month of Jestha.

IDEMIA, accepting the request of the Nepal government, has decided to charge a fee of US $ 10.13 per copy. A local representative of the company said that the company is ready to supply passports in these difficult times, having provided services in Nepal for more than a decade and a half.

In addition to supplying passports, IDEMIA (In Smart and Identity) will replace 20 application systems (enrollment systems) that were destroyed during the ‘Gen-G movement’ and compensate for 56,000 passports that were damaged in the same movement.

To address the passport shortage, Prime Minister Sushila Karki herself took the lead and initiated talks with the incumbent French and new German companies. IDEMIA Group CEO Anton Grenier and Veridos Vice President Fabiola Bellersheim came to Kathmandu for the high-level discussions.

According to sources involved in the talks, the new supplier, German company Veridos, had advised the passport department to purchase passports from IDEMIA for the time being. Veridos responded that it would be 'almost impossible' for them to integrate their passports into another company's system in a short period of time, as IDEMIA has built and operated the current system and the infrastructure with personal details.

With the immediate supply assured, the passport department has said it will now increase the number of daily applications. The department has said it will manage staff to regularize the service and start sending passport copies to Nepali missions abroad and district and regional administration offices within two weeks.