COE premiums continue to fall

Singapore

CERTIFICATE of Entitlement (COE) premiums for passenger cars here continued to fall on Wednesday for the second tender for July, on the back of expectations of a bigger COE quota next month.

Category A, for cars below 1,600cc and 130 hp, fell S$2,811 to S$55,889; Cat B, for cars above 1,600cc or 130 hp, dived S$7,392 to S$58,109.

Both premiums are the lowest in the first seven months of this year.

Cat E, the open category which currently tracks Cat B, was S$8,900 lower at S$60,101.

Passenger-car premiums have now fallen in five straight bidding exercises.

In Cat C for goods vehicles and buses, the premium remained steady at S$50,002, up S$1 from the previous bidding exercise.

Cat D for motorcycles was S$196 lower at S$6,312.

All in, 4,566 bids were received for the quota of 3,339 available COEs.

Steffen Schwarz, managing director of Volkswagen Singapore, said: "We expected a small decrease in COE premiums. However, we foresee that premiums will stabilise in the coming weeks because of the higher number of vehicle registrations, and there are more people coming in to buy cars."

This latest bidding exercise was the last in the current May-to-July 2015 period before the COE quota goes up in the upcoming August-to-October period.

Although the complete deregistration numbers for the period are not known yet, the COE supply is expected to rise by up to 15 per cent.