COEs fall in all except small cars category

COEs fall in all except small cars category
By Wayne Chan | Posted: 23 March 2011 1720 hrs

SINGAPORE: Premiums for Certificates of Entitlement (COEs) fell in all but the small cars category, or category A - which went up by S$1,213 to S$43,813.

The biggest fall was in the big cars category, or category B, where the premium fell by S$4,892 to S$57,002.

The open category COE fell S$2,937 to S$59,073.

COEs for commercial vehicles dropped S$311 to S$29,690.

Motorcycle COEs fell S$70 to S$2,534.

Mr Ron Lim, general manager of sales and marketing at Tan Chong Motor said the rise in category A is due to aggressive bidding by taxi companies wanting to expand their fleets.

"In fact, they have been coming in quite aggressively over the last six months to secure all these category A COE. For example in this round alone, they make up almost 20% of the bids that went in," said Mr Lim.

As for the falls across the other categories, Mr Lim said it was almost expected.

"Because of the crisis in Japan, it created quite a lot of volatility in the market, especially the stock market, so the category B cars are more affected than the rest," said Mr Lim.

Mr Lim said the concern would be supplies of cars from Japan.

However, he said that most distributors should have sufficient stock to cover them over the next two to three months, and there should not be any impact unless there are further delays in Japan's production recovery.

- CNA/cc

- wong chee tat :)