Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap

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Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap

Bloomberg01-29

Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her ...

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PandaEyes
·01-29
It's not status, it's convenience. I'm a sinkie with car, even at times when I don't have my car, I will still do a uber. It's the amount of time saved as compared to taking a public transport.
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vchong8
·01-29
it's one of the failures of a centrally planned economy. China is reflecting the same issues. In Japan's large cities, many own a car. The govt only made it prohibitively costly to drive one or park one. Largely becos, Japan makes cars and also many drive out of town for weekends. Singapore should review the auction based COE system. It does not reflect a caring society but one in favor of the wealthy. The rich can buy time but everyone else must wait for the next train or bus.
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Kok
·01-29
In other countries that are big and you can't easily travel from one place to another, a car is necessary. In tiny Singapore where public transport can get you almost everywhere, cars are not a necessity. People buy cars cos it's a status thing. N it's natural for people to get angry when they can afford to buy cars in the past but not now. The problem is with population growth. The govt is using population growth rather than productivity growth to help sustain economic growth. Our tiny island is just going to keep growing more n more dense, until everyone suffocates to death.
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JimmyChua
·01-29
Crazy prices. I bought a suzuki swift 1.5 in UK. Only a few k sgd
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Tootsieroll
·01-29
It's money making scheme for the govt pocket 🫶
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The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.Wealth Gap“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”","kind":null,"is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":true,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":0},"commentList":[{"id":268155604496656,"gmtCreate":1706498751784,"gmtModify":1706498756388,"author":{"id":"4099020730670950","authorId":"4099020730670950","name":"PandaEyes","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a7bab6c039b2d7b334f21626cfada364","vip":1,"crmLevel":7,"crmLevelSwitch":1,"idStr":"4099020730670950","authorIdStr":"4099020730670950"},"htmlText":"It's not status, it's convenience. I'm a sinkie with car, even at times when I don't have my car, I will still do a uber. It's the amount of time saved as compared to taking a public transport.&nbsp;","listText":"It's not status, it's convenience. I'm a sinkie with car, even at times when I don't have my car, I will still do a uber. It's the amount of time saved as compared to taking a public transport.&nbsp;","text":"It's not status, it's convenience. I'm a sinkie with car, even at times when I don't have my car, I will still do a uber. It's the amount of time saved as compared to taking a public transport.","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/268155604496656","repostId":1148579351,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1148579351","pubTimestamp":1706492906,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1148579351?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2024-01-29 09:48","market":"sg","language":"en","title":"Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1148579351","media":"Bloomberg","summary":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her nat","content":"<html><head></head><body><ul style=\"\"><li><p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last year</p></li><li><p>Affordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflation</p></li></ul><p>For most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.</p><p>But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.</p><p>“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.</p><p>Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.</p><p>The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.</p><p>COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.</p><p>That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.</p><h3 id=\"id_2217787695\" style=\"text-align: start;\">Wealth Gap</h3><p style=\"text-align: start;\">“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”</p><p style=\"text-align: start;\">The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e973c7f3b04c5b41f7a2f42f3a17e633\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"699\"/></p><p>Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.</p><p>For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.</p><p>“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.</p><p>Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9f8f526ed31993c8b584b89d6cd327b9\" tg-width=\"763\" tg-height=\"721\"/></p><p>In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.</p><p>The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”</p><p>A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.</p><p>For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.</p><p>“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1584095487587","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nSingapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2024-01-29 09:48 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"STI.SI":"富时新加坡海峡指数"},"source_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1148579351","content_text":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.Wealth Gap“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":268154058793040,"gmtCreate":1706498479544,"gmtModify":1706498484804,"author":{"id":"4114838310976802","authorId":"4114838310976802","name":"vchong8","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/239af25e56373b957e3c4bf76ed861e0","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"4114838310976802","authorIdStr":"4114838310976802"},"htmlText":"it's one of the failures of a centrally planned economy. China is reflecting&nbsp;the same issues. In Japan's large cities, many own a car. The govt only made it prohibitively costly to drive one or park one. Largely becos, Japan makes cars and also many drive out of town for weekends.&nbsp; Singapore should review the auction based COE system. It does not reflect a caring society but one in favor of the wealthy. The rich can buy time but everyone else must wait for the next train or bus.&nbsp;","listText":"it's one of the failures of a centrally planned economy. China is reflecting&nbsp;the same issues. In Japan's large cities, many own a car. The govt only made it prohibitively costly to drive one or park one. Largely becos, Japan makes cars and also many drive out of town for weekends.&nbsp; Singapore should review the auction based COE system. It does not reflect a caring society but one in favor of the wealthy. The rich can buy time but everyone else must wait for the next train or bus.&nbsp;","text":"it's one of the failures of a centrally planned economy. China is reflecting the same issues. In Japan's large cities, many own a car. The govt only made it prohibitively costly to drive one or park one. Largely becos, Japan makes cars and also many drive out of town for weekends. Singapore should review the auction based COE system. It does not reflect a caring society but one in favor of the wealthy. The rich can buy time but everyone else must wait for the next train or bus.","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/268154058793040","repostId":1148579351,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1148579351","pubTimestamp":1706492906,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1148579351?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2024-01-29 09:48","market":"sg","language":"en","title":"Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1148579351","media":"Bloomberg","summary":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her nat","content":"<html><head></head><body><ul style=\"\"><li><p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last year</p></li><li><p>Affordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflation</p></li></ul><p>For most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.</p><p>But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.</p><p>“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.</p><p>Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.</p><p>The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.</p><p>COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.</p><p>That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.</p><h3 id=\"id_2217787695\" style=\"text-align: start;\">Wealth Gap</h3><p style=\"text-align: start;\">“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”</p><p style=\"text-align: start;\">The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e973c7f3b04c5b41f7a2f42f3a17e633\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"699\"/></p><p>Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.</p><p>For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.</p><p>“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.</p><p>Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9f8f526ed31993c8b584b89d6cd327b9\" tg-width=\"763\" tg-height=\"721\"/></p><p>In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.</p><p>The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”</p><p>A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.</p><p>For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.</p><p>“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1584095487587","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nSingapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2024-01-29 09:48 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"STI.SI":"富时新加坡海峡指数"},"source_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1148579351","content_text":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.Wealth Gap“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":268143740272648,"gmtCreate":1706495830582,"gmtModify":1706495836073,"author":{"id":"3560204717545571","authorId":"3560204717545571","name":"Kok","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/efc25bb5380f85af49509ed68d9a3d8f","vip":1,"crmLevel":7,"crmLevelSwitch":1,"idStr":"3560204717545571","authorIdStr":"3560204717545571"},"htmlText":"In other countries that are big and you can't easily travel from one place to another, a car is necessary. In tiny Singapore where public transport can get you almost everywhere, cars are not a necessity. People buy cars cos it's a status thing. N it's natural for people to get angry&nbsp;when they can afford to buy cars in the past but not now. The problem is with population growth. The govt is using population growth rather than productivity growth to help sustain economic growth. Our tiny island is just going to keep growing more n more dense, until everyone suffocates to death.","listText":"In other countries that are big and you can't easily travel from one place to another, a car is necessary. In tiny Singapore where public transport can get you almost everywhere, cars are not a necessity. People buy cars cos it's a status thing. N it's natural for people to get angry&nbsp;when they can afford to buy cars in the past but not now. The problem is with population growth. The govt is using population growth rather than productivity growth to help sustain economic growth. Our tiny island is just going to keep growing more n more dense, until everyone suffocates to death.","text":"In other countries that are big and you can't easily travel from one place to another, a car is necessary. In tiny Singapore where public transport can get you almost everywhere, cars are not a necessity. People buy cars cos it's a status thing. N it's natural for people to get angry when they can afford to buy cars in the past but not now. The problem is with population growth. The govt is using population growth rather than productivity growth to help sustain economic growth. Our tiny island is just going to keep growing more n more dense, until everyone suffocates to death.","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/268143740272648","repostId":1148579351,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1148579351","pubTimestamp":1706492906,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1148579351?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2024-01-29 09:48","market":"sg","language":"en","title":"Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1148579351","media":"Bloomberg","summary":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her nat","content":"<html><head></head><body><ul style=\"\"><li><p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last year</p></li><li><p>Affordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflation</p></li></ul><p>For most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.</p><p>But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.</p><p>“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.</p><p>Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.</p><p>The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.</p><p>COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.</p><p>That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.</p><h3 id=\"id_2217787695\" style=\"text-align: start;\">Wealth Gap</h3><p style=\"text-align: start;\">“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”</p><p style=\"text-align: start;\">The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e973c7f3b04c5b41f7a2f42f3a17e633\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"699\"/></p><p>Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.</p><p>For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.</p><p>“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.</p><p>Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9f8f526ed31993c8b584b89d6cd327b9\" tg-width=\"763\" tg-height=\"721\"/></p><p>In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.</p><p>The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”</p><p>A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.</p><p>For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.</p><p>“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1584095487587","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nSingapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2024-01-29 09:48 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"STI.SI":"富时新加坡海峡指数"},"source_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1148579351","content_text":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.Wealth Gap“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":268139763634360,"gmtCreate":1706495061700,"gmtModify":1706495066644,"author":{"id":"3574984385549978","authorId":"3574984385549978","name":"JimmyChua","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3574984385549978","authorIdStr":"3574984385549978"},"htmlText":"Crazy prices. I bought a suzuki swift 1.5 in UK. Only a few k sgd","listText":"Crazy prices. I bought a suzuki swift 1.5 in UK. Only a few k sgd","text":"Crazy prices. I bought a suzuki swift 1.5 in UK. Only a few k sgd","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/268139763634360","repostId":1148579351,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1148579351","pubTimestamp":1706492906,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1148579351?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2024-01-29 09:48","market":"sg","language":"en","title":"Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1148579351","media":"Bloomberg","summary":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her nat","content":"<html><head></head><body><ul style=\"\"><li><p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last year</p></li><li><p>Affordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflation</p></li></ul><p>For most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.</p><p>But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.</p><p>“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.</p><p>Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.</p><p>The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.</p><p>COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.</p><p>That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.</p><h3 id=\"id_2217787695\" style=\"text-align: start;\">Wealth Gap</h3><p style=\"text-align: start;\">“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”</p><p style=\"text-align: start;\">The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e973c7f3b04c5b41f7a2f42f3a17e633\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"699\"/></p><p>Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.</p><p>For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.</p><p>“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.</p><p>Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9f8f526ed31993c8b584b89d6cd327b9\" tg-width=\"763\" tg-height=\"721\"/></p><p>In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.</p><p>The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”</p><p>A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.</p><p>For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.</p><p>“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1584095487587","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nSingapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2024-01-29 09:48 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"STI.SI":"富时新加坡海峡指数"},"source_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1148579351","content_text":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.Wealth Gap“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":268134983258216,"gmtCreate":1706493710332,"gmtModify":1706493886867,"author":{"id":"3575535431943242","authorId":"3575535431943242","name":"Tootsieroll","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e1ec6090a100f45863daf6da5efcf9ad","vip":1,"crmLevel":8,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3575535431943242","authorIdStr":"3575535431943242"},"htmlText":"It's money making scheme for the govt pocket 🫶","listText":"It's money making scheme for the govt pocket 🫶","text":"It's money making scheme for the govt pocket 🫶","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/268134983258216","repostId":1148579351,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1148579351","pubTimestamp":1706492906,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1148579351?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2024-01-29 09:48","market":"sg","language":"en","title":"Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1148579351","media":"Bloomberg","summary":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her nat","content":"<html><head></head><body><ul style=\"\"><li><p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last year</p></li><li><p>Affordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflation</p></li></ul><p>For most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.</p><p>But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.</p><p>“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.</p><p>Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.</p><p>The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.</p><p>COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.</p><p>That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.</p><h3 id=\"id_2217787695\" style=\"text-align: start;\">Wealth Gap</h3><p style=\"text-align: start;\">“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”</p><p style=\"text-align: start;\">The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e973c7f3b04c5b41f7a2f42f3a17e633\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"699\"/></p><p>Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.</p><p>For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.</p><p>“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.</p><p>Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9f8f526ed31993c8b584b89d6cd327b9\" tg-width=\"763\" tg-height=\"721\"/></p><p>In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.</p><p>The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”</p><p>A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.</p><p>For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.</p><p>“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1584095487587","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Singapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nSingapore's $200,000 Toyotas Fuel Angst Over Widening Wealth Gap\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2024-01-29 09:48 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"STI.SI":"富时新加坡海峡指数"},"source_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-28/singapore-s-200-000-toyotas-fuel-angst-over-widening-wealth-gap?srnd=premium-asia","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1148579351","content_text":"Permit to own a car spiked at a record $112,000 last yearAffordability debate grows with elevated rents, inflationFor most of her life, Sabrina Vu had a car, even though you can’t drive far in her native Singapore, a city-state about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island.But when she went to the showroom for the first time in six years and realized she’d have to shell out the price of an Aston Martin in most countries for a Toyota in the Asian financial hub, she thought again.“When we went into the Toyota dealership, they were asking S$260,000 ($193,870) for a hybrid,” she said, giving the price for the car and the permit that’s necessary to drive it in Singapore. “I mean, it’s not even a luxury car,” said the communications manager, 35.Singapore’s vehicle ownership cost — already a global outlier — remains not far from a record high, as the government’s zero-growth approach to registering new cars collided with demand from the island-state’s burgeoning rich.The price of the vehicle includes the cost of a Certificate of Entitlement — a permit granting the right to own and use a car in Singapore for 10 years. The COE rate is set at an auction every two weeks and has almost quadrupled in three years to reach S$150,000 in October for cars with engines larger than 1.6 liters.COE prices cooled off recently after the government increased the number of permits for sale, but they remain vulnerable to sudden spikes. On Jan. 17, the premium surged 32% to S$112,000 for larger cars in the busy period before the Lunar New Year.That’s adding to a broader debate around elevated rents, inflation, and an influx of wealthy foreigners in recent years. Singapore’s high living cost is by far the most important issue facing the city-state, according to a survey of residents published in October. The government’s handling of the wealth gap and the price of cars are among the issues they were most dissatisfied with, according to the survey.Wealth Gap“COE prices, like many other things actually, emphasize the wealth gap in Singapore,” said Victor Kwan, a senior lecturer at Singapore University of Social Sciences. “If it continues to go up, there will be growing frustration.”The island-state is the world’s priciest place to own some of the most popular cars, according to cost-of-living data from Numbeo, an online database. What’s more, COEs are unlikely to come down significantly due to constant demand, said Vinod Cherumadathil, the managing director of Sgcarmart, a local online car marketplace owned by the financial arm of Toyota Motor Corp.Still, driving in Singapore was never meant to be cheap. Since 1990, the government has controlled the number of cars on the road and in 2018, adopted a zero-growth policy for the vehicle population.For most people, it’s also not essential. The city-state has excellent public transport links by bus and subway. The proportion of car-owning resident households has fallen from 40% in 2013 to about one-third in recent years. But owning a car is still seen as a symbol of wealth that many strive toward.“I know people who would eat less, eat cheaper, not go out as often to save up for a branded bag or a nice car, because it is almost like a status thing,” said Vu, the prospective buyer.Net worth per adult rose 6.3% in Singapore in 2022, giving the city-state more than 300,000 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS Group AG’s global wealth report. Still, COE prices for small cars more than doubled between 2018 and 2023, while median monthly income rose just 2.4%. A worker on a median salary of S$5,197 per month would need to spend about three years’ wages to buy a Toyota sedan.In May, authorities committed to bringing forward 6,000 permits to cool the market, but that failed to arrest prices, prompting the minister in November to pledge to bring forward further the quota of permits to address a trough in supply.The Ministry of Transport declined to comment in response to emailed questions from Bloomberg News concerning its views on the spike in COE prices and the question of affordability. In a reply to questions in Parliament on Nov. 6, then-acting Minister Chee Hong Tat said the ministry “understands the concerns of Singaporeans regarding high COE prices.”A representative for Inchcape, a distributor for Toyota in Singapore, didn’t respond to emails from Bloomberg News seeking an interview.For many Singaporeans, a car remains an important part of their lifestyle. At the Singapore Motorshow earlier this month, Abu Bakar bin Isnin, 64, was mulling purchasing a new vehicle despite a new COE permit costing about twice the price of his nearly expired one.“It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Abu Bakar, who plans to drive his grandchildren around after retiring from his job as a manager. “People buy cars because it’s necessary to bring your family around, your own family comes first.”","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"}],"hasMoreComments":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":16,"commentSize":5,"repostSize":4,"favoriteSize":0,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false}}