The age of Singapore's car population is at its all time high, the oldest in more than a decade. The Straits Times reported that number of cars aged between eight to ten years climbed to 107,251, with more than half of the 621,000 cars on our roads above six years old.

High COE prices have caused motorists to hold on to their cars, which suppresses deregistration. This causes an 'evil cycle' where new car COE premiums are pushed further up as fewer COEs are given out.

The local daily believes that soaring COE prices will also cause lower profit margins by car dealers.

Speaking to the local daily, Product Manager Vincent Ng at Kah Motor, the local distributor of Honda cars, expects demand for new cars to grow in line with the increasing deregistration from the fourth quarter. This is part of the reason why motor traders hope that the authorities will bring forward some certificates that are due in the upcoming COE supply boom, which is expected to happen between 2015 to 2017.

Industry players are still hopeful that COE prices will fall, although that is unlikely to happen within the next six months.