Explainer: What it costs to make a national passport

Ever wondered why it costs so much to get a national passport not just in Nigeria but across the world, even though the product is 98 percent paper component?

Passports around the world cost different amounts, depending on which country one lives in, but grant freedom to travel throughout the world.

First, some passports are more expensive than others; some cost what would take an average worker within a country hundreds of hours to earn. Second, the passports could only grant access to a handful of countries or grant access to the majority of the world.

The average cost of a passport across the globe is $74, with an average of N500 to a dollar, which will cost (N37,000).

United States passport costs about $145, (N72,500) to obtain, making it the eighteenth priciest passport, the cost of which takes the average American worker about 4.6 hours to earn. While the average price of a passport in North America is relatively high, there is no country within the continent that it won’t take an average worker a week to earn the cost of one.

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The most expensive passport is the Syrian passport, which costs about $800 (N400,000) each. According to a report from CashNetUSA, economic and political struggles have inflated the price, which was $9 less a decade ago.

For Nigeria, approved fees for the new passports are as follow: 32-page five-year standard passport will be sold for N25,000 or $130 (for overseas applicant), 64-page five-year standard passport for N35,000 or $150 (for overseas applicant) and 64-page 10-year standard passport at N70,000 or $230 (for overseas applicant). These fees however exclude bank charges.

With the Federal Government’s minimum wage at N30,000, an applicant can barely afford a 32-page five-year standard passport.

Many have asked why a country’s passport, which is one of the very few means of identification with paper as its major component, could cost so much for the average salary earner. The reasons are not farfetched.

Security is one major thing among many others that would make the passports very expensive. Just as it cost the Nigeria’s government so much to print the naira currencies, it also cost the government so much to print its passports.

If it is very cheap to print the notes, there won’t be dirty naira currencies in the banks’ commercial businesses transactions and in the markets.

BusinessDay’s checks show that it cost Nigeria more than $5 to print any of the currencies outside the country, including the N10 note. With an official rate of N412 to a dollar, it cost the country N2,060 to print each naira note.

Further investigations show that it cost the country almost the same or a bit lower to print each page of the Nigerian passport as a result of the security features.

There are however some concessions and discounts given to the Nigerian government for printing in bulk.

The passport booklet paper offers appropriate ruggedness and absorption characteristics. Fibres with fluorescent properties (visible under UV light), which are mixed into the paper pulp during the paper manufacturing process to serve as a security feature. They may be visible (coloured fibres) or invisible under normal light.

The bulk of the passport document includes the cover and end pages (glued to the inside of the cover) and the pages that hold the visa and entry and exit stamps. And for those that have not yet migrated to polycarbonate, the paper will also form the basis of the all-important data page, which includes the holder’s details and portrait.

Other features of the paper include the watermark, UV ink, latent image, photochromic ink, rainbow colouring, microprint and security laminate.

To maintain an effective defence against the menace of counterfeiting, all these paper elements need to be given careful consideration. As ever, success will ultimately lie in making it as complicated, time-consuming, and expensive as possible for forgers to copy or compromise a legitimate document.

John Ojikutu, security consultant and secretary-general of the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI), explains that the security nature of the passports is to prevent stolen identity by insiders and outsiders threats, and these are the reasons for printing them beyond the national territories where the security can be guaranteed from countries with integrities.

“Most developed countries we know too, print their national currencies and passports from more credible countries than theirs,” Ojikutu states.

Italian passports are made in Rome by the State Mint and Polygraphic Institute, which has been a public limited company since 2002, but with the ministry of the economy as the sole shareholder.

Germany’s Berlin Federal Print Company, a state-turned-private company, has the contract with its government – and also makes passports for China and the United Arab Emirates.

Gemalto, a Thales Group company based in France, prints passports for countries like Sweden, Turkey and the UK.

Iris Technologies prints passports for Nigeria, Senegal and Solomon Islands.

Seyi Adewale, CEO, Mainstream Cargo Limited, says what makes passport expensive generally includes the data chip production, the ultra-security structure in respect of the needed transport and logistics value chain, the associate public key infrastructure necessary to manage digital certificates and public-key encryption, and coupling to assure proper integration and binding of the document.

Other than the paper components that have features such as anti-scan, watermark and chemical sensitizers, Adewale says a major component is the data chip embedded within the ePassport.

The chip manufacturing companies in Germany, which are the best, can produce very large good quantities within shorter time frames and also have good security to avoid breach of processor data theft or mismanagement, Adewale notes.

Other than Germany, there are a few companies fairly spread across USA, France, UK, Malaysia, Israel and Switzerland that can produce this at varying levels of quality, efficiency, speed and security, he states.