Singapore's 10-Year Car Ownership Permit Tops 130,000 Singapore Dollars at Auction

MacroRegulation
โดย Money & Banking·SG·Read original
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Bloomberg reports that anyone wanting to buy a new car in Singapore must bid for a Certificate of Entitlement, or COE, which is valid for just 10 years and currently costs more than 130,000 Singapore dollars, or over 102,000 US dollars, before taxes, fees and the price of the car itself are added. This makes Singapore one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a new car. A mid-range Tesla Model Y in Singapore costs more than 240,000 Singapore dollars, over three times its price in the United States. The system operates under the Vehicle Quota System, or VQS, introduced by the government in 1990, under which the state sets the number of COEs released to the market and holds auctions every two weeks. After the VQS took effect, the annual growth rate of the car population fell from more than 7% in the late 1980s to about 3%. Singapore today has only about one car for every nine people, compared with roughly one car for every 1.2 people in the United States, and in 2025 only 32% of Singaporean households owned a car, down from 40% in 2013. The latest COE prices have reached as high as 158,000 Singapore dollars, and COE sales generated 8.66 billion Singapore dollars in revenue for the state in the fiscal year ending in March. Outside Singapore, such car quota systems are rare, with China a notable exception. Shanghai began using car quotas in 1994, before Beijing, Guangzhou and Tianjin adopted similar measures.

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