Category A premiums fall to under S$124,000 in latest COE bidding exercise

Premiums for Category A cars, or those 1,600cc and below with horsepower not exceeding 130bhp, dropped by over S$2,000.

SINGAPORE: Certificate of Entitlement (COE) premiums closed mixed in the latest bidding exercise on Wednesday (Aug 5).

For Category A cars, or those 1,600cc and below with horsepower not exceeding 130bhp, premiums closed at S$123,890 (US$96,600), 1.7 per cent down from S$126,000 in the last exercise.

Premiums for larger and more powerful cars in Category B rose to S$129,910 from S$129,890, an increase of just S$20.

COEs for commercial vehicles, which include goods vehicles and buses, fell 2.5 per cent to S$91,545 from S$93,889 in the previous bidding exercise.

Motorcycle premiums closed at S$10,503, up 3 per cent from S$10,202 in the last exercise.

Open category COEs, which can be used for any vehicle type but end up being used mainly for large cars, rose by 0.8 per cent, to S$131,000 from S$129,971.

A total of 4,337 bids were received, with a quota of 3,242 COEs available.

Wednesday's bidding exercise is the first for the August to October period, which will see COE quotas increase slightly to 19,085, a 0.2 per cent increase from the previous quarter's 19,052 COEs.

The increase is driven by a rise in the Category B quota, which will grow by 6.2 per cent to 5,527, while the Category A quota will fall by 4 per cent to 7,134.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said last month that merging Category A and Category B COEs into a single category was one of the ideas floated during its focus group discussion on access to cars in Singapore.

Transport Government Parliamentary Committee deputy chairperson Edward Chia, who proposed the idea, and fellow MP Ang Wei Neng noted that in recent years, manufacturers have tweaked vehicle specifications to qualify for Category A COEs, contributing to a narrowing gap in premiums between Category A and Category B COEs.

"Many raised that engine capacity and engine power rating criteria have become less effective in differentiating mass market and higher-end cars," said LTA.