SINGAPORE - The supply of car certificates of entitlement for the May-July period will dip by 9.5 per cent to 5,875 per month - a much smaller drop than the 20 per cent shrinkage some motor industry players were expecting.
Announcing the quota on Thursday , the Land Transport Authority said there would be an average of 8,448 COEs per month for all vehicles - 3.5 per cent down from the current quota. There will be 2,848 COEs per month for cars up to 1,600cc, 13.7 per cent fewer than currenlty. The supply for cars above 1,600cc or 130bhp will be 5 per cent lower at 2,278 per month.
The open category, which can be used for any vehicle type except motorcycles but which ends up mostly for bigger cars, will see a 5.7 per cent drop in supply to 749 COEs per month.For motorcycles, the COE supply will rise by 8.7 to 1,794 per month. The figures seem to support speculation that premium surges seen in the last two tenders were driven more by aggressive competition between private-hire operators than fears of a supply drop.