MCIT signed National ID Project with GTR (Grand Technology Resources)

On December 12, 2010 Ministry of Communication and IT, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Finance officially announced the start of the Electronic Tazkira (NID) project.  

At the beginning H.E. Eng. Amirzai Saning Minister of Communications and IT delivered a comprehensive speech regarding the value and importance of the NID project and said: Today I have great pleasure to announce another major stride forward towards progress of our country and towards improvement of our government services. H.E. further added that that the NID  project will introduce new electronic National ID system on a smartcard multi-application chip platform, which will allow additional applications such as Drivers’ License, Vehicle Registration, Digital Signature and Voters’ List management in the current scope, whereas e-Passport, e-Voting and e-Taxing will be part of its future prospective package.

H.E went on to say that the NID system chosen for Afghanistan is a modern and highly developed new system in the world. At the moment only a few highly developed Countries such as Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, UAE and some others are using this system. Fortunately Afghanistan is the first country in the region which is going to implement this modern and highly developed system, he added.

The total cost of this project, which will be implemented within 36 months, amounts to USD101.5 Million to be paid from the Development budget of the Ministry of Finance. The project is planned to be implemented in three phases. Phase one will cover Kabul province in 8 months from the signing date. Phase two of the project will cover 15 provinces within a period of 12 months, and finally the 3rd phase will cover the remaining 18 provinces in 16 months.   

The contract is awarded to GTR (Grand Technology Resources) a local ICT company which has renowned foreign companies such as Hyundai IT-South Korea, IRIS-Malaysia and Entrust-North America as its partners.


It is worth mentioning that the implementation of this project will allow the government to give new National ID cards which are very secure, modular, scalable and robust and based on a very innovative ICT platform, to all the citizens of Afghanistan.

The new National ID system will enable the government to establish a very accurate, up to date and effective database of the census of the country’s population, their movement, and addresses, age categories and many more.  This in turn will enable the government to prepare very effective and efficient development plans as well as public services projects and simplify business and public processes and procedures, and by doing so remove the very complicated government procedures and tackle the issue of corruption.

At the end of the session, after the contract was signed by H.E. Eng.  Baryalai Hassam, Technical Deputy Minister and Mr. Mirwais Alizai representative of GTR Company, H.E. Eng.  Amirzai Sangin Minister of Communications and IT responded to questions posed by journalist.