No plans to hold back COEs: Josephine Teo

There have been calls to smoothen out future Certificate of Entitlement (COE) supply by holding back COEs but this is not a straightforward exercise and the government has no immediate plans to implement it.

Senior Minister of State Josephine Teo was responding to the possibility of "reserving some COEs today for release in the future in order to make the COE supply less variable" during the Committee of Supply Debate on Wednesday.

"If we reserve too few COEs, there will be no meaningful impact on supply smoothening," she said. "Too many and we risk having a shortfall of COEs to meet replacement demand and may inadvertently introduce even more volatility into premiums."

As for the suggestion to categorise COEs according to carbon emissions, Mrs Teo said carbon emission is not a good proxy for the value of a car, and so categorising them in this way could disadvantage mass market models.

"We therefore prefer to promote green private transport through the CEVS," she added, referring to the Carbon Emission-based Vehicle Scheme.

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