PF resumes making passports from this Saturday (24), says minister

The making of new passport books will be reestablished as of this Saturday (24) by the Federal Police.

According to the body, passports requested in person from December 1st to 22nd are being produced “gradually”. The progress of the request must be consulted online until the document is “available for delivery”.

New requests will have a normalized deadline as soon as the previous ones have been processed, the PF said in a note.

“As promised yesterday [sexta-feira] (23), the issuance of passports was promptly reestablished by the @policiafederal”, said Minister Anderson Torres (Justice and Public Security) on a social network.

To request the document, it is necessary to fill out a form and gather the documentation to be presented on the day of the face-to-face service. According to the PF, the normal time to obtain the document varies from 7 to 25 business days after confirmation of payment of the fee.

The queue for issuing passports totaled 100,000 people, according to information from the Federal Police on Tuesday (20). The delay stems from lack of budgetary resources. On that day, there was no forecast of resumption of service.

The first suspension of the issuance took place on November 19. At the time, the police informed that the measure was taken due to “the insufficiency of the budget destined to the activities of migratory control and issuance of travel documents”.

At the end of that month, R$ 37.4 million were released, but the service was stopped again in December.

The PF was then awaiting a supplementary credit of over R$31.5 million. On the 15th, Congress approved a bill to make this amount viable, but the use of the resource still depended on the sanction of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

In August, the Ministry of Justice had asked for BRL 74 million to ensure the continuity of the service.

The passport issuance fee is BRL 257.25. The money goes to the National Treasury’s single account. The release of resources depends on the availability of space in the Budget.

With the growth of mandatory expenses, the Executive had to block discretionary resources from several agencies to avoid the spending ceiling overflow, the rule that limits the increase of expenses to inflation.

The Ministry of Justice was the target of a cut of R$ 229.14 million, R$ 161.7 million of which in the body’s own appropriations and the rest in funds directed by parliamentarians via amendments.