Opinion | Shanghai licence plates 'precious as gold,' says vice mayor
If scoring a licence plate for your car in Shanghai means winning an auction, getting one for your car in the future will be akin to winning the lottery.
If scoring a licence plate for your car in Shanghai means winning an auction, getting one for your car in the future will be akin to winning the lottery – with gold as the prize.
Speaking at the municipality’s People’s Congress meeting on Sunday, Shen said chronic traffic problems in the city of 23 million “could not be ignored” and that more efforts would be put into developing public transport networks including bus and rail.
“We are using the auction system to ease road congestion…so far the results have been pretty good,” Shen said. “It’s not that the government wishes to see Shanghai plates getting more and more expensive. We don't expect this auction method to become a way of raising public revenue either.”
According to the Shanghai Commodity International Auction, the average licence plate price was 75,332 yuan (HK$93,880) in January – about 6,000 yuan more than last month. One of these plates a year ago would have fetched just 50,000 yuan.