E-passport replaces old system as costs double

It says fees for 72-page passports will also increase in the same proportion.Passport and Immigration Department sources said 5,572,130 passports were issued nationwide in 2025.

Of these, 3,275,263 were issued under the normal machine-readable category, 1,839,487 under the urgent category and 276,789 through fast-track service.

Close to 180,000 e-passports were also issued during the year.The figures cited for previous years show that 6,596,520 passports were issued in 2024 and 6,717,938 in 2023.A combined total of 13,314,458 passports were issued during those two years, averaging approximately 6.7 million annually.

The report describes the 2025 total as the highest in the country's history for a single year, although the figures it provides for both 2023 and 2024 are higher.The shift to e-passports is part of a wider move towards modern travel-document technology, with many countries adopting electronic passports.

The Directorate General of Immigration and Passports has introduced the system in Pakistan using modern technology and additional equipment.For the project, the department has installed 10 additional modern printing machines and six laminators.

It has also established round-the-clock services at 232 offices, alongside 93 window counters at Pakistani missions abroad that operate day and night.According to the figures cited in the report, passport fees generated Rs47,645,523,500 for the national exchequer in 2024, while collections in 2023 were approximately Rs50 billion.The report further says that an average of Rs40 billion a year was deposited into the government treasury during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 fiscal….

The department says the new fees have been fixed in line with those higher production costs.

Existing machine-readable passports will remain usable until their validity expires.

E-passport replaces old system as costs double Talib Fareedi | Updated 15 minutes ago | Old machine-readable travel document discontinued.