70% of foreign passports issued in Moscow are biometric
Over the past few years, the timeframe for issuing passports has decreased. In Moscow, almost all passports are issued twice as fast as the deadlines, up to 15-20 days, and soon the terms will be reduced. This is due to the development of electronic interdepartmental interaction. This was told by the head of the organization of visa and registration work of the FMS Alexander Aksenov.
According to Personalmoney.ru, only 0.02% of issued passports are issued longer than the regulatory period. The FMS encourages citizens to use new technologies more actively. In particular, on the FMS website Moscow You can find out if the passport is ready by entering the series and number of the civil passport.
Seven out of ten passports issued in Moscow are biometric. But since 2013, the FMS intends to begin mass issuance of passports with fingerprints. Similar technologies have already been introduced in St. Petersburg.
Now the FMS issues two types of passports - five-year old sample and new biometric passports valid for 10 years. Biometric 10-year passports are thicker, they have more pages. Passports of the old sample are cheaper, the amount of state duty that is charged for their registration is less than for biometric ones. Now the only biometric indicator in 10-year passports is a photograph.
Speaking about old-style passports, Alexander Aksenov said that Russia may refuse to use them en masse. The date of this innovation has not yet been reported; according to Aksenov, this will happen no earlier than a year, or even much later. According to him, passports that do not contain biometric information can be left as a document in case of urgent travel of citizens.
“There are situations where the existence of force majeure circumstances requires a person to urgently travel abroad; then the law allocates three days for the production of a passport, it is physically impossible to make a new electronic document within this period, for this purpose it is assumed to keep a short-term passport. Perhaps it will be thinner, for a period of 1 year or for a one-time trip, Aksenov said.
Most of the countries that have switched to issuing biometric documents have retained old-generation passports, but they are short-term.
Source: http://www.travel.ru/news/2012/03/06/198835.html