COE quota to be fixed every 3 months from Feb

[SINGAPORE] The six-monthly quota for certificates of entitlement (COE) will be shortened to three months starting from next month.

Announcing the change yesterday, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said that it was refining the COE quota system to make it more responsive to vehicle de-registrations.

Before this, the COE quota was calculated every six months after taking into account the number of vehicles de-registered in the preceding six months.

The LTA said a shorter recycling period will enable better and more prompt matching of the number of new COEs to be issued to replace de-registered vehicles.

For the upcoming February to April 2014 quota, there will be a total of 9,127 COEs, down 12.3 per cent from the 10,412 COEs for an equivalent three-month period during the preceding August 2013 to January 2014 quota.

Category A, for cars under 1,600cc and with less than 97 kW or 130 hp - the latter being a new condition from next month onwards - will have 717 COEs per month, down 1.5 per cent from 728 previously.

Cat B, for cars above 1,600cc, will have 701 COEs monthly, down 6 per cent from 746; while Cat E, the open category, gets 382, down 26.8 per cent from 522.

Cat C, for commercial vehicles, will have 524 pieces each month, and Cat D, for motorcycles, 719.

Still, the LTA said the total quota for February to April 2014 is 474, or about 5 per cent, more than if the quota had not been changed from half-yearly to quarterly (see table).

The COE quota is determined by three components.

The first is a provision for a 0.5 per cent per annum vehicle growth based on the vehicle population as at Dec 31 last year.

The second is the adjustment for changes in the taxi population, expired COEs and over-projections of vehicle de-registrations in 2008/2009.

Finally, the third and main component consists of the replacement COEs for vehicles de-registered in the preceding three-month period of October to December 2013.

The LTA said that the October-December period was taken instead of July-September because "using the most recent quarter was the more appropriate choice to ensure responsiveness to the recent de-registration patterns".

An LTA spokeswoman said: "There is no loss as we will be using three months of de-registrations to determine three months of COE supply."