Your car still drives beautifully. The aircon bites, the tyres have plenty of life left, and you know exactly which carpark ramp it grumbles at. Then a reminder letter lands, and a perfectly ordinary Tuesday turns into a five-figure decision.
That decision hangs on one number, and most owners meet it properly only when their Certificate of Entitlement (COE) is weeks from running out. Here is what the October 2026 figures say, and what they mean for the money sitting in your account.
Start with the PQP, not the loan
The Prevailing Quota Premium (PQP) is the price of keeping your car on the road for another term. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) works it out as a moving average of the quota premiums from the last three months in which bidding exercises were held, and publishes the figure monthly on its COE renewal page on OneMotoring.
You do not bid for it. There is no strategy and no queue to join. The figure is set, it moves every month, and you either pay it or you let the car go.
October 2026 in numbers
| Category | PQP, October 2026 (LTA) | 10-year renewal | 5-year renewal (50% of PQP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category A (up to 1,600cc and 97kW) | $128,715 | $128,715 | $64,358 |
| Category B (above 1,600cc or 97kW) | $131,616 | $131,616 | $65,808 |
For context, the most recently completed exercise, whose results LTA published on 7 October 2026, closed at $130,001 for Category A and $130,100 for Category B, narrowing the gap between the two categories to $99. Because the PQP averages what came before it, the figure lags the auction, which is why Category A renewal currently sits below the latest round while Category B renewal sits above it.
Very few owners settle a sum like that from savings alone, which is why a COE renewal loan in Singapore usually enters the conversation at precisely this point.
Before you get there, though, the two questions that follow will shape your total cost far more than any interest rate will.
Five years or ten
A ten-year renewal costs the full PQP and can be repeated for as long as you keep the car. A five-year renewal costs half of it, and for Category A and Category B cars LTA allows that option only once; when those five years are up, the car has to be deregistered.
The shorter term suits an owner who wants a defined runway and a smaller sum upfront. The longer one suits someone who expects to still be driving the same car well past the halfway mark, and it preserves a COE rebate if plans change, since LTA refunds the unused portion of a ten-year COE pro-rated across 120 months. Work out honestly how long you want the car, then match the term to that answer instead of to the friendlier headline figure.
What renewal quietly takes away
Renewing pushes your car past its tenth birthday, and that closes the door on the Preferential Additional Registration Fee (PARF) rebate permanently. PARF is a slice of the Additional Registration Fee (ARF) paid at registration, and it is payable only when a car is deregistered at ten years old or younger. Above ten years, the rebate is nil, according to LTA.
One recent change deserves attention before you compare renewing with buying new. For cars registered with COEs obtained from the second bidding exercise in February 2026 onwards, LTA cut the schedule to 30 per cent of the ARF paid for a car deregistered at five years or under, capped at $30,000, tapering to 5 per cent in the tenth year. Cars registered before that keep the older and considerably more generous schedule, as set out in the PARF rebate revision LTA announced in February 2026.
The practical effect is that a brand-new replacement bought today carries far less rebate value at the end of its own ten years than the same purchase would have carried a few years back. That does not settle the renew-versus-replace question on its own, and plenty of owners are still better off scrapping. What it does mean is that any comparison built on the old PARF assumptions now understates what going new really costs.
Road tax climbs with age
Older cars pay a road tax surcharge, and it stacks up faster than most owners expect. LTA applies 10 per cent above ten years, 20 per cent above eleven, 30 per cent above twelve, 40 per cent above thirteen, and 50 per cent above fourteen, according to the road tax information published on OneMotoring as at October 2026. Budget for that across the full renewal term, not just the first year of it.
Running the financing side
Should you decide to renew, the money usually comes from a loan arranged across the renewal term. At Accord Motor Enterprise we arrange COE renewal financing and handle the LTA submission on your behalf, so there is no queuing and no form-chasing at your end. The application itself is assessed and approved by the financing company, not by us.
On rates, read carefully wherever you shop. We publish a 2.45% p.a. promotional rate-equivalent alongside a contractual loan rate of 2.78% p.a., with the gap funded as a separate rebate that we pay ourselves.
Before the deadline arrives
A renewal deadline is one of the few motoring dates with no give in it. Once a COE expires you have a one-month window to renew, and after that the vehicle is deregistered and has to be disposed of, according to LTA. Diarise the date the moment the reminder lands.
If your certificate runs out in the next few months and you would like the numbers laid out plainly, come and talk to us at 48 Toh Guan Road East. We will walk you through the options, prepare the paperwork, and lodge the submission with LTA for you. Bring your logcard and a rough idea of how much longer you want to keep the car, and the rest is a conversation.
