COE prices hit new highs for big cars, Open category; premiums up across the board
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COE premiums in the big car and Open categories set new records on Aug 10.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
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SINGAPORE - Certificate of entitlement (COE) prices rose across the board, setting records in the big car and Open categories, in the latest tender exercise that closed on Thursday.
The COE premium for cars with engines larger than 1,600cc or more power than 130bhp, as well as electric vehicles (EVs) with a power output of more than 110 kilowatts, ended at $126,889 – nearly 4.9 per cent above the previous high of $121,000 recorded in June.
The premium for the Open category COE – which can be used for any vehicle type except motorcycles, but ends up mostly for bigger cars – also reached a new high.
The latest premium of $126,201 was 3.35 per cent higher than the $122,110 posted at the previous tender exercise,
The COE premium for smaller, less powerful cars and EVs ended 4.51 per cent higher at $99,499, up from $95,202 at the last tender exercise.
The commercial vehicle COE premium finished at $82,100, inching up by 0.12 per cent from $82,001 at the previous exercise.
The COE premium for motorcycles climbed 9.52 per cent to $11,501, from $10,501 posted three weeks ago.
This is the first tender exercise under the August-October quota period, where there are 5.6 per cent more COEs
Motor dealers seized the opportunity to follow up on earlier sales leads after the higher COE supply was announced in late July.
Ms Corinne Chua, managing director for Volvo Cars at Wearnes Automotive, said sales have been strong, with car brands hosting roadshows at shopping malls to bring in more orders.
Further fuelling the demand for COEs was a longer three-week gap from the last tender exercise in July – one week more than the norm, owing to a function of the calendar.
This meant that dealers had more time to secure orders.
Hence, the increased demand for COEs outpaced the comparatively small rise in supply.
In Category B (for big cars), which had a modest increase of just eight COEs, there were 251 more bids received than in the previous exercise. In Category A (for small cars), there were 51 more COEs, but 221 more bids than in the last round.
Most of the bids were submitted well before the 4pm deadline on Thursday, confirming observations from dealers that more cars were sold in the past few weeks.
Half an hour before the 4pm deadline, the small car COE category already drew more than 800 bids.
Between 3.30pm and 4pm, the premium crept up steadily from around $93,000 to end at $99,499, with 949 bids in total. Some bidders would have revised their bids upwards as the tender progressed to secure their certificates.
This was in contrast to what was observed in previous exercises, where the premium moved fairly slowly for much of the final hour before a surge in bids during the final moments of the tender pushed COE prices up.
Speaking to The Straits Times after Thursday’s bidding exercise, Mr Ng Choon Wee, group commercial director at Komoco Motors, said: “Moving forward, dealers would have to adjust their prices because there is not enough margin to absorb the COE premium increases.”
For motorcycles, the rise in premiums was expected, given that there were fewer such COEs in this round than in the last few tenders.
Industry sources also pointed to the Gegar Moto Fest, a motorcycle show held at the Singapore Expo over the weekend, from last Friday to Sunday, as a possible reason for the higher motorcycle COE premiums.
Yew Heng Motorsports, a dealer that took part in the show, posted on Facebook that it had raked in $500,000 in sales as at Sunday.
As with any large number of orders, motorcycle dealers would likely need several rounds of COE tenders to deliver all of them.
Mr Willy Tan from GigaRider, which rents out motorcycles, said that even at current price levels, the company was still interested in securing COEs, as it is preparing for a shift to offering electric motorcycles.
