The Government on Wednesday, February 6, adopted a decision enabling the issuance of biometric passports to Moldovan citizens, Info-Prim Neo reports. Minister of Information Development Vladimir Molojen explained that the biometric passports are optional for the time being, as the regular passports will remain valid for 7 or 10 years more. According to the minister, a number of countries have started to adopt biometric passports in an experiment to improve security thanks to the computer chip that contains biometric details, including the fingerprints of both indexes of the holder. Molojen informed that a production line of biometric passports is now in place at the state-run enterprise Registru. At the entry and exit terminals of the Chisinau International Airport there were installed the first two electronic readers to decipher the chips. Although biometric passports haven’t been produced in series so far, they will soon be available to all those interested, promised the minister. The first passport of this kind was issued to President Vladimir Voronin. The cost of making one biometric passport is around €75, which is rather reasonable, given that in other countries it is twice as high. The Ministry estimated that the costs of implementing the new service will be around $4.5 million, with an investment recovery period of about five years. A Moldovan biometric passport looks quite like the regular one, except that it has a distinct mark telling about the existence of a computer chip. Depending on the amount of time needed to process the application for a biometric passport and issue it, the fees that a Moldovan citizen will have to pay to get one range from 1,250 lei, if the passport is required within a month’s time, to 3,330, if it is required within four hours.