Reg Plates Number Plate Shortage Delays New Car Registration

A shortage of vehicle number plates has hit the Kenyan market, causing a backlog in the clearance of cars at the Mombasa port.

More than 6,000 imported second-hand vehicles are lying at container freight stations (CFS) in Mombasa, and owners are being charged Sh3,000 daily for delayed clearance.

The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) attributed the shortage of the plates on reduced supply amid an increase in demand for car registration.

“There is a small shortage because of less supplies from Kamiti Maximum Prison.

This should not be a cause for alarm as we expect the situation to normalise soon,” said NTSA director-general Francis Meja.

The law mandates the prisons department to make the plates. It is mandatory for imported second hand vehicles to be fitted with number plates before leaving the port.

The rule does not affect new vehicles imported by franchise holders who offload and bond the units in customs warehouses awaiting sale.

The rule is meant to check tax evasion by unscrupulous traders through dumping in the local market cars meant for landlocked Uganda and Rwanda.

Storage charges

Dealers said that the shortage had hit them hard as they were forced to incur storage charges at the port amid cash flow hiccups due to delays as some had taken loans.

The storage charges are based on the volume of vehicles and the number of days they take at Mombasa port or at container freight stations.

“CFSs charge an average of Sh3,000 per vehicle per day, an expense the importer should not incur because they have paid import duty and port charges. This means that car owners are being overburdened by NTSA’s inefficiency,” Car Importers Association of Kenya (CIAK) chairman Peter Otieno said yesterday.

He said the authority had delivered 500 plates on Wednesday.

“We did registration for the (KC)D series in December before Christmas and so far registration has been done up to the (KC)K series. Given that each series has 999 vehicles, this means 6,493 units don’t have the plates,” Mr Otieno said.

The NTSA said making manual number plates, which are prone to duplication, was slow and that the proposed new-generation, high-tech plates will offer a long-term solution to the supply hitch.

Tendering hiccups have affected the introduction of the new plates.

Kenya experienced a similar shortage of number plates in 2013 which saw about 2,500 imported vehicles stuck at the port for about a month.

The country imports about 6,000 used cars monthly, according to dealers.

So what are the top selling number plates in the UK? The DVLA has been selling private plates to UK motorists since 1989. During this time, there have been a number of records set, but most of the top 10 have been bought in the past 15 years. Here’s what currently makes the list:

25 0 – A Ferrari dealer bought this for £518k in 2014. It is now on a £10 million Ferrari 250 SWB.
F 1 – A businessman, Afzal Khan, bought this for £440k in 2008 and put it on his McLaren-Mercedes SLR.
S 1 – This was bought in 2008 for £404k by an anonymous buyer.
1 D – Businessman Nabil Bishara bought this plate in 2009 (before One Direction was formed, so it is not a reference to the band) for £352k.
M 1 – Businessman Mike McCoomb bought this number plate in 2006 for £331k, apparently for his son, who was 10 at the time.
VIP 1 – Chelsea owner and businessman Roman Abramovich bought this plate for £285k in 2006.
51 NGH – This number plate, which looks like the surname Singh, was sold in 2006 for £254k.
1 RH – Businessman Robert Haverson bought this in 2006 for £247k.
K1 NGS – This reg plate, which looks like the word “kings”, was bought anonymously in 1993 for £231k.
1 0 – This very simple but striking number plate was bought anonymously in 2009 for £170k.

These are large amounts of money, but they are all small compared to the top-selling number plates found in other parts of the world. Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, has the record for the most expensive number plate ever sold. That number plate was a simple “1”. It was bought in 2008 by businessman Saeed Abdul Ghaffar Khouri for £7.25 million.

number plates