Bulgaria's Interior Ministry would be ready to start issuing new ID documents by March 2010, Deputy Interior Minister Veselin Vuchkov told Parliament on September 11, Focus news agency said.

In late June 2009, just weeks before national elections, when presenting the technology that would be used to produce Bulgaria's new biometric passports, then interior minister Mihail Mikov proudly announced the country would start issuing the documents "no later than January 2010".

At the time Mikov said he expected the ministry would actually be ready by October 2009, but issuing would not start until January to allow any last minute problems to be resolved.

The contract for the production of Bulgaria’s new identity documents was signed between the Interior Ministry and Germany’s Siemens in April 2009, despite three companies who competed for the order contesting the selection of Siemens in front of the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC).

"If the SAC confirms the outcome of the procurement, we can start issuing documents in March 2010," Vuchkov was quoted by Focus as saying.

Additionally, amendments would have to be made to the Law on Identity Documents to resolve a number of issues, Vuchkov said.

As an example, he said the current law did not foresee handling the administration of gender-changes, he said.

Because gender is encoded into the social security number, a change of gender would lead to a change in social security number.

So far there had been three cases of identity changes in Bulgaria, according to Focus news agency.

Changes in the Law on Identity Documents also included the introduction of online applications for ID document-issuing.