DistantNews
Support us
🇹🇼 Taiwan /Economy & Trade

Passport applications keep falling, prompting Taiwan to cut next year’s printing budget by more than NT$100 million

From Liberty Times · () Chinese

Translated from Chinese and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data New plan
  • Taiwan issued 1,132,370 passports in the first half of this year, down from 1,239,934 during the same period last year but above the 2019 level.
  • The Bureau of Consular Affairs has proposed NT$1.091597 billion for passport printing and production next year, NT$117.956 million less than this year’s budget.
  • Annual passport issuance has declined since reaching 3.484615 million in 2023, followed by 2.863311 million in 2024 and 2.308621 million in 2025.

Taiwan’s passport demand is continuing to ease after the post-pandemic travel surge. The Bureau of Consular Affairs issued 1,132,370 passports in the first half of this year, about 100,000 fewer than in the same period last year.

The decline has prompted the bureau to reduce the budget for printing and producing passports. Its proposed budget for the next fiscal year sets aside NT$1.091597 billion for the work, a cut of NT$117.956 million from this year’s allocation.

Demand remains higher than before the pandemic. The bureau issued 953,389 passports in the first half of 2019, compared with more than 1.13 million during the first half of this year.

The annual figures show the same downward pattern. Taiwan issued 3,484,615 passports in 2023, 2,863,311 in 2024 and 2,308,621 in 2025. The bureau said applications and overseas travel surged after pandemic restrictions eased, but issuance has fallen each year since 2023.

About this summary

Originally published by Liberty Times in Chinese. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

More Stories

From Our Blog