City further limits plate prices

Shanghai will further lower the price ceiling for license plates, the traffic authority said yesterday.

Next month, the upward limit for the first round of bidding will be set at 77,300 yuan (US$12,607), down 2,600 yuan from this month's maximum, according to Sun Jianping, director of the Shanghai Municipal Transport and Port Authority.

The price ceiling for June will be the weighted average of the average successful bids from last November to March.

The limit at this month's auction was based on the weighted average bids from last December to March.

The new policy was implemented in April. Officials said it was designed to check irrational price hikes.

In the first three months of this year, the price of a license plate soared 32.5 percent and surpassed 90,000 yuan for the first time, sparking many complaints from the public.

Sun said the government is mulling plans to optimize car plate bidding rules by controlling the supply, stabilizing prices, and cracking down on speculation.

Car plate prices dropped for the second consecutive month on Saturday, dropping more than 10,000 yuan from two months ago to 80,803 yuan.

In March, Vice Mayor Jiang Ping outlined three back-up plans should the current ones fail to reverse the upward trajectory in plate prices.