Vehicle buyers, both of cars and motorbikes, may not be able to get license plates, because the regional Transport offices issuing the plates are running out of them.
Officials told Kathimerini that there’s only an inventory of 4,000-5,000 plates left in the country, which might run out in about 10 days. This is the last of the batch of 120,000 pairs of car plates and 60,000 bike plates ordered in spring via an express procedure bypassing the usual bidding, with the approval of the State Audit Office.
The original bid by the Infrastructure and Transport Ministry had been delayed by lawsuits from losing bidders.
There are already delays in obtaining license plates, especially for bikes. Some dealers have made upward of 30 sales and cannot deliver the bikes because they lack the plates. In some cases, sales dropped 50% in July, usually a banner month.
