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.
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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 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.
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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 are mainly used 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 was 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.
Deputy chairperson Edward Chia of the Transport Government Parliamentary Committee, who proposed the idea, and fellow Member of Parliament Ang Wei Neng noted that in recent years, manufacturers have adjusted vehicle specifications to qualify for Category A COEs, contributing to a narrowing gap in premiums between Category A and Category B COEs.
LTA said: "Many raised (the point) that engine capacity and engine power rating criteria have become less effective in differentiating mass market and higher-end cars."
Separately, Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow said that removing bids from car-leasing companies and private-hire cars would have little impact on COE premiums.
In a written parliamentary reply on Wednesday to a question from MP Sharael Taha (PAP-Pasir Ris-Changi), Mr Siow said that in 2024 and 2025, an average of about 10 per cent of Category A and B registrations were for cars owned by car-leasing companies, while about 9 per cent were for private-hire cars owned by individuals.
Mr Sharael had asked about the proportion of Category A and B COEs used to register vehicles owned by car-leasing companies and by people who lease their cars for use as private-hire vehicles.
Mr Siow added: "Cars registered by individuals as private cars account for more than three-quarters of registrations.
"Even if we removed all the bids for car-leasing companies and private-hire cars, the clearing price would not be much lower, as the vast majority of successful bids today are already typically within 5 per cent of the eventual clearing price."
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