By Land Transport Authority (LTA) has announced that the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) quota for February 2017 to April 2017 will be 26,391.
LTA noted that bidding under this quota will start with the first COE bidding exercise in February 2017.
LTA said that the vehicle growth rate from Feb 2015 onwards has been set at 0.25% per annum.
It also noted that as taxis were moved from Cat A to Cat E from 6 Aug 2012, Cat E receives 17 COEs from the vehicle growth component for the taxi population of 27,534 taxis as at 31 Dec 2016.
It added that since new taxi registrations are drawn from Cat E, they need to be deducted from the total number of Cat E COEs. As the net increase is only known at the end of the quota period, the new registrations are adjusted in the quota of the subsequent period.
Over the six-month period between 1 Jul 2016 and 31 Dec 2016, 1760 taxis were registered and 2419 taxis were deregistered. Therefore, a net adjustment of (2419 – 1760) = 659 will be made to the Cat E quota over the subsequent two quarters from Feb 2017 to Apr 2017 and May 2017 to Jul 2017.
LTA also mentioned 2,355 vehicles were registered under the Early Turnover Scheme from Oct to Dec 2016. 90% of the COEs issued under this scheme, i.e. 2120, are deducted from the Cat C quota, and 10% i.e. 235 COEs from Cat E.
It stated that the COE quota consists of the following components:
- Provision for 0.25% per annum vehicle growth based on the vehicle population as at 31 December 2016.
- Replacement COEs from vehicles deregistered in the preceding three-month period of October to December 2016.
- Adjustments for changes in the taxi population, replacement of commercial vehicles under the Early Turnover Scheme, and expired COEs.
LTA stated that the next quota announcement for the bidding period of May 2017 to July 2017 will be made in April 2017.