Vaune Phan is a motorcycle enthusiast and blogger.

According to her blog, she's been riding motorbikes for the past seven years, and has owned bikes from KTM, Honda and Suzuki. She now has a Ducati Hypermotard, a Ducati 899 Panigale and a Suzuki DR200 for dirt biking. This picture shows her two Ducatis:

Unfortunately for Phan and her fellow motorcycle enthusiasts, this year's Budget did not bring the best news — specifically, introducing several measures that would make buying large-capacity motorcycles far more expensive than before.

Here's what has kicked in right away, from this month's second COE bidding exercise ending Friday, Feb. 24:

The policy change targets the small but rising number of motorcycle buyers buying expensive bikes, with Open Market Values (OMV) as high as that of small cars.

We should add, though, that according to Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, based on current registration trends, more than half of new motorcycle buyers will not be affected by the new system.

Also, another change will see the quota for motorcycle COEs excluded from open category COEs, which is good for other motorists, but not so good for motorcyclists — as it reduces a source of COEs and could potentially send prices upward further.

The past three years, as it is, haven't been too peachy for motorcycle owners in Singapore. According to data from the Land Transport Authority, COE prices for motorcycles were always safely under the $2,000 mark, up till 2011, where they started hovering around that point:

After the criterion placed on engine power for cars in Category A kicked in in February 2014, though, motorcycle COE prices shot up from $1,989 on the Jan 8 2014 bidding exercise...

To $4,502 in the April 23 2014 bidding exercise, just over three months later.

As you can see, it's since trended up more and more, and now sits pretty at above $6,000.

So back to Phan, who after hearing the Budget announcement, took to Facebook on Wednesday, where she has more than 22,000 followers, to post the following rant:

"We have masked robbers caught and incarcerated, yet we have our finance minister gloriously on TV, executing daylight robbery on citizens who save up hard-earned wages to own a bigger capacity motorcycle to suffice their daily transport/sport/leisure all in one.

After increasing public transport rates, you give a miserable 10-cent discount for every 6 train rides spent, you issue one-off GST vouchers capped at $200 that isn't even close to covering the increased Water Utilities bill rates, yet you take tens of thousands of dollars from us in an instant, without a damn reason with a new Additional Registered Fee (ARF) of up to 100% of the OMV for bigger motorcycles.

Who are you to rob us monetarily? Who are you to rob us of our simple hobbies? And where does this unjustifiable 100% extra ARF loading on motorcycles go to?

In the year of the Rooster, I guess you've undeniably earned yourself the biggest Cock award of the year."

And it looks like other bikers agree:

You can read her full post here:

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Top photo by Aaron Ong Kai Ming; via Vaune Phan's Facebook page

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