Budget Meals As a Proportion of All Meals Sold Hawker Stalls

16 Ms Mariam Jaafar asked the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment in light of the continued rise in food prices at hawker centres (a) what proportion of meals sold at a hawker stall are budget meals; and (b) whether there has been feedback from hawkers that the budget meals are increasingly difficult to sustain.

The Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment (Dr Koh Poh Koon) (for the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment): Sir, while the National Environment Agency (NEA) does not regulate prices of cooked food sold at hawker centres, it aims to provide hawkers with a conducive environment to set affordable food prices. Thus far, despite rising costs, affordable meal options remain available at our hawker centres, including those managed by NEA and Town Councils, as well as socially conscious enterprises, where the operators are required to keep food affordable and have done so by ensuring at least one budget meal option per stall.

Mr Speaker: Ms Mariam Jaafar.

Ms Mariam Jaafar (Sembawang): I thank the Senior Minister of State for the response. I have one supplementary question. Basically, we are still seeing an increase in prices at our hawker centres. The budget meals are much appreciated, but we are starting to see quite a big divergence between the budget meals and the regular price meals; and also starting to see a creep in the lower price options, say from a $3.80-budget meal has become a $4.20-budget meal in one of my coffee shops.

So, I understand that currently they have a rental rebate of 5% to sustain these budget meals and that is for a year. Does the NEA or the Housing and Development Board (HDB) have any plans to extend that rebate or do we see any risk of the prices of budget meals not being able to be sustained at the $4 price range that they are at today?

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Sir, I thank the Member for raising this concern. As I said, NEA does not regulate food prices sold at hawker centres because hawkers face different cost pressures in running their operations. Some of these factors can include the operating costs, perhaps utilities, it could also pertain to some of the other cost that they incur from buying their raw materials, for example. These things differ from stall to stall.

But as she has mentioned, NEA does provide some help in terms of moderating their rentals and in times of need, there has been some rent rebates given to these hawkers. We will watch these pressures on our hawkers closely and if there are further needs, we can see how we can best assist them.

The longer-term sustainable option is to really see how they can also become more productive. Some of these hawkers have already adopted more productive formats, with shared resources such as centralised cleaning as well as dishwashing, so that they can pool their resources together and incur less costs from their cleaning and their dishwashing needs. Other options that can help defray the costs to consumers, for example, would come in the form of our cost-of-living Assurance Packages, including Community Development Council (CDC) vouchers, that help our residents to have some extra cash to spend at these hawker centres and also bring some revenue benefit to these hawkers as well.

So, I think, through these kind of efforts in a multi-pronged manner, we hope to reduce the cost impact on consumers while helping our hawkers to remain sustainable.

Mr Speaker: Ms Mariam Jaafar, next question.