There are certain fundamentals in our Certificate of Entitlement system that we should not disregard.

First, for a bidding system to work best, market forces or the price mechanism must do the driving with little interference.

Second, asking the Government to allocate COEs to favour certain peoples is akin to asking it to ‘play God’ and meddle in the functioning of the system.

Third, segmenting the market with man-made supply curves interferes with supply and demand forces. No one can forecast months in advance the demand for each category and match it accurately with a hand-drawn supply curve. Have just one supply curve.

Fourth, social equity is a political issue and should be tackled outside the market system. Let Parliament decide and formulate a method with the least market intercession.

If there is one supply curve, a possible way is a discount scheme: Buyers of plush cars pay the successful bid price, buyers of cheaper ones get discounts, ranging from 10 to 40 or even 50 per cent.

Cars would then be classified using import prices, the best indicator for the purpose.