The cost of owning a car in Singapore has hit a new record high, after the price of special car ownership certificates for small vehicles rose to nearly $100,000 yesterday.
Singapore regularly auctions a fixed number of “certificates of entitlement” (COEs) that permit car ownership for a fixed period of 10 years. Introduced in 1990, the COE system aims to limit the number of vehicles on the road to about 1 million. This has made Singapore – a city-state of 6.1 million with abundant public transport – one of the most expensive places in the world to own a car.
According to Mothership.sg, the COE for Category A cars, or those with an engine capacity below 1.6 liters, hit a record S$129,000 ($99,756), during the latest round of bidding yesterday, an amount approaching the median household income in Singapore.
The Category B premium, which applies to larger, more powerful cars such as SUVs, rose from S$123,502 to S$130,889 ($101,192). The COE for commercial vehicles also rose to a record S$95,000 ($73,447), while motorcycle certificates rose slightly from S$9,989 to S$10,201 ($7,886).
These prices are paid on top of the actual cost of the car and other associated costs such as customs duties and taxes. The result is that certificates of ownership alone cost several times as much as cars so in most other nations.
As Reuters notes, “the price of a certificate alone is now equivalent to the cost of buying four Toyota Corollas in the United States.” The same vehicle in Singapore, with the certificate, registration fees, and taxes, would cost S$179,888 ($139,000).
The price of COEs collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but have resurged since then, with the costs of both Category A and B certificates more than quadrupling over pre-pandemic levels. In October 2023, certificates for Category B cars crossed the $100,000 mark for the first time. At the time, COEs for smaller cars were worth around S$100,000 but according to Reuters, have “steadily risen” from S$102,009 ($78,844) since the first auction of this year.
These increases have pushed car ownership certificates beyond the reach of most middle-class Singaporean households, the average income of which sat at S$149,352 ($115,471) in 2025.
However, Singaporean citizens can console themselves with the fact that while state regulation has made car ownership unaffordable for many, it has also done the opposite for housing. While the cost of private housing in Singapore is among the highest in Asia, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) offers heavily-subsidized apartments at just a fraction of the cost. In 2023, the median private home price in Singapore was 13.7 times the median household income, whereas the same figure for public HDB flats stood at just 4.7.
Needless to say, both forms of intervention are likely anathema to the legions of Lee Kuan Yew admirers across the Western world who cite Singapore as the paragon of a small government, free market Utopia.
