Hawkers' Seminar and Awards 2024 - Dr Koh Poh Koon

Speech by Dr Koh Poh Koon, Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment at Hawkers' Seminar and Awards 2024

Mr Yeo Hiang Meng, President of FMAS

Mr Anthony Low, Chairman of the Hawkers’ Division of FMAS

Representatives and Friends from the Hawker Community

Ladies and Gentlemen

1 Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to join you today at the fifth edition of the Singapore Hawkers’ Seminar and Awards 2024, organised by The Federation of Merchants' Associations, Singapore (FMAS).

2 Hawker food is one of our most beloved cultural icons in Singapore. All of you, our hawkers, are an important part of Singaporeans’ daily lives. You do your best, despite a challenging operating environment, to serve up delicious and affordable food options that make us feel proud to be Singaporeans. We often hear Singaporeans say the first thing they do after coming back from an overseas trip, is to head to our hawker centres to satisfy they cravings for our delicious hawker food.

3 Today, we recognise our most outstanding and enterprising hawkers. As we honour your contributions, we also look ahead to see how we can nurture future generations to be excited about the hawker trade. We remain committed to supporting all of you, so that we can keep our rich hawker culture alive. I will take the opportunity later to outline new measures that we are putting in place to support this.

Recognising Hawkers and Hawker Centres

4 I am pleased that FMAS will be presenting four categories of awards today to celebrate our hawkers.

5 The Hawker Heritage Award celebrates established hawkers, whose skills have been passed down through generations. The nominees are familiar names that many of us will go to for our comfort food. For example, patrons of Boon Lay Hawker Centre will be familiar with the long queues for Boon Lay Power Nasi Lemak. Established in 1971, this family- run venture has flourished for over 53 years. Now in its third generation, it is managed by Nyonya Bte Mohd Shah and her family, with four thriving outlets across Singapore. Congratulations and well done!

6 The path of a hawker is not an easy one, and we recognise that new entrants can benefit from guidance. We are heartened that many veteran hawkers have selflessly stepped up to dedicate their time and expertise to support aspiring hawkerpreneurs. Mr Tan Chew Kee Philip, of Mei Ji Fishball Noodle at Blk 163 Bukit Merah Central, is one such example. Nominated for the Outstanding Hawker Mentor Award, Philip is a veteran hawker who has worked closely with NEA to refine the Hawkers’ Development Programme or HDP, since its inception. He has over a decade of mentorship experience and like a ‘kungfu master’ he has guided three aspiring hawkers under the HDP. Today, one of his mentees is now selling ban mian at the same hawker centre as him.

7 We have many enterprising hawkers among us who have innovated to grow their hawker businesses. How many of us are aware that we can create menus using WhatsApp Business, where customers can order and pay via WhatsApp? This was exactly what Affandi Rahman has implemented for his stall Izah Rahman Corner at Marine Parade Central. Affandi has also leveraged other types of technology to boost his business. His digital menu board not only attracts interest but allows him to easily transition between breakfast and dinner menus.

8 In addition to the three categories, this year, FMAS also invited the public to vote for their favourite hawker centre. I look forward to finding out which hawker centre amongst the many in Singapore, received the most votes this year.

9 The Singapore Hawkers’ Awards is a recognition of your tireless dedication to the hawker craft. Congratulations to all award winners who will be receiving your awards shortly.

Supporting the Hawker Trade

10 In many ways, entering the hawker trade is a calling. The work can be physically demanding and involve long hours of preparation, but all of you continue to show up each day so that Singaporeans can enjoy our favourite Chicken Rice, Mee Rebus and Roti Prata at affordable price points. At the same time, you may be worried about earning a fair living while trying to keep prices competitive. As the government, we share the same concerns. This is a tension that we need to balance as a society – keeping hawker fare affordable, while ensuring that hawkers earn a decent livelihood. At the end of the day, how much a hawker can sell a bowl of noodles for, is very much dependent on how much Singaporeans are prepared to pay.

11 On our part, Government strives to support hawkers by providing a conducive operating environment from which our hawkers operate. We do so in two main ways – improving your access to manpower, and keeping rental affordable.

Manpower

12 Let me start with manpower. The number of meals you can serve is dependent on how much manpower you have, especially during peak hours. I know finding stall assistants is a challenge for some of you. So, we made some enhancements recently.

a. I announced in Parliament last month that NEA will be relaxing our manpower policy to allow hawkers to hire long-term visit pass holders with Letter of Consent/ Pre-Approved Letter of Consent regardless of familial ties, starting from 1 January 2025.

b. Although being a hawker stallholder remains reserved for Singaporeans and PRs to safeguard the local identity of our hawker culture, we hope that expanding the pool of potential stall assistants from which hawker stall operators can hire will help to address some of the manpower challenges you face.

13 But there is another dimension to manpower, which is to make each person more productive.

a. In this regard, I am glad that some hawker centres and hawkers have tapped on NEA’s productivity support measures. These include the Productive Hawker Centres programme, which provides up to 70% tiered subsidy for hawker centres to adopt centralised dishwashing, as well as the Hawkers Productivity Grant, which provides 80% co- funding for individual hawkers to purchase kitchen automation equipment and digital solutions. Some operators from Socially Conscious Enterprise Hawker Centres, or SEHCs, have also tapped on their industry networks to offer bulk purchasing services to better manage raw material costs.

14 By providing access to a larger pool of potential stall assistants and partnering you to improve your productivity, we can help ease your livelihood. With greater productivity, we also hope that you spend fewer hours doing food preparation so that you can have more rest and leisure time.

Rental

15 I will next move on to rental. We have kept stall rentals at NEA’s hawker centres generally affordable. There is no reserve rent and minimum bid price for stalls today. Some stalls have gone as low as $1. Median rent is around $1,200 per month, and this has remained relatively stable for the past 10 years. Subsidised stallholders pay only about $300 per month. The cost of building hawker centres is not recovered through rental. This is something that is borne by government.

16 We know that rent only forms a small component of your total cost (usually less than 10%), which is primarily the cost of food ingredients and manpower (up to 70-80%). But by keeping rent affordable, we can help make your cost of doing business lower, even if it is not by a large percentage.

17 However, stall rental has attracted much attention recently. Most bids for vacant stalls are not that far from the assessed market rent, which is around $1,200. But a small percentage can be quite high, especially at popular hawker centres. Recently, there was a successful bid for a cooked food stall at Marine Parade Hawker Centre, which was in excess of $10,000. While the numbers are small, we want to avoid such high bids becoming the norm in the future.

18 Currently, when stalls at hawker centres become vacant, NEA allocates them through a price-based tender system on a monthly basis. Vacant stalls are allocated to the highest bid, which becomes the stall rental for the first tenancy period of three years. After this first three years, the successful bidder will have their stall rental adjusted to the assessed market rent or AMR, which has a median of about $1,200 per month for a non-subsidised cooked food stall.

19 There may be situations where prospective tenderers put in overly high bids upfront to secure their preferred stall. Some do this knowing that under the current policy, their tendered rent will be adjusted downwards to the AMR at the next tenancy renewal after three years. But there are also some who do it without a full understanding of business costs involved, resulting in them having to pay high rentals that they cannot sustain in the long term.

20 This is why going forward, to encourage more realistic bidding behaviour that better consider actual market conditions, we will make two changes to our policy:

a. First, we will make available more information and online business cost estimation tools for prospective bidders. This is to assist tenderers to make a more informed decision when they submit a tender bid for a hawker stall. We are working on the details, which we plan to make public early next year.

b. Second, to discourage unrealistic bidding behaviour that banks on tendered rental being lowered after three years, we will stagger its downward adjustment over a longer period. After the initial three years, stall rental will be adjusted to 50% of the difference between bid price and AMR when tenancy is renewed. This rental rate will be in place for three more years, the duration of the second tenancy, before it is fully adjusted to AMR from the 7^th year onwards (the 3^rd tenancy term).

c. For example, if the tendered rent is $5,000 in the first 3 years and AMR is $1,000, the rent will be adjusted downwards to $3,000 in the next three years from Years 4 to 6, and will only reach $1,000 from Year 7 onwards.

21 This new policy will take effect from the next tender exercise in November 2024. It will only be applied prospectively. Existing hawkers will not be affected.

22 These changes seek to encourage prospective hawkers to make more considered decisions when bidding, to enable a more sustainable business model. In the long-run, we hope these will ensure reasonable hawker stall rental bids, and help hawkers strike a balance between pricing food affordably and sustaining their stalls.

23 We will continue to monitor the tender bidding behaviour closely, and review the tenancy policies regularly to ensure that they stay relevant.

Social Compact

24 I have spoken about how Government is providing a conducive operating environment for our hawkers through improving your access to manpower and keeping rent affordable. We will continue to find more ways to support all of you. But let me turn back to the balance we need to strike as a society in terms of keeping hawker fare affordable, while ensuring that hawkers earn a fair living.

25 The bulk of your expenditure is the cost of ingredients and manpower (up to 70-80%). I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. If a hawker manages to make a $1 profit per bowl of noodles, they will need to sell 200 bowls a day, 6 days a week, to earn the median salary of the average Singaporean of $5,000. Many of you don’t sell that many meals a day, or earn as much per meal. So, we know it is not easy to earn your living. Without a decent earning, it would be challenging to encourage the next generation of younger Singaporeans to enter the hawker trade and ensure the continuity of our hawker culture.

26 For hawkers to make a better living, you may need to price your food more realistically, especially amidst global inflationary pressures where the cost of raw materials has gone up. We import more than 90% of the food we eat and when these source countries are also facing high inflation, your raw material cost are also higher. Many Singaporeans empathise with the need for hawkers to earn a fair living, but price increases are not always easy to accept.

27 On our part, the Government has rolled out initiatives such as CDC vouchers, which can be used at participating hawker stalls, helping to bring business to hawkers while defraying the cost of eating out for patrons.

28 These are complemented by many local initiatives. For example, in 2023, the Marine Parade Citizens’ Consultative Committee, Marine Parade Merchant’s Association and Katong Joo Chiat Business Association worked together with some hawkers in three hawker centres and coffeeshops, to launch a Value Meal @ Marine Parade initiative for patrons. In September 2024, the Marine Parade constituency also launched the Marine Parade Family Vouchers for eligible families to use at its neighbourhood merchants, markets and hawker centres.

29 There are also other private sector initiatives to support hawkers and consumers, such as the ongoing DBS PayLah app’s Support Our Heartlands initiative and the earlier DBS’s 5 Million Hawker Meals scheme, which offer users cashback if they used the PayLah app to pay for their hawker meals on designated days. We are deeply encouraged by these initiatives, which affirm our hawkers while supporting the community, and hope to see many more of them as we continue to uplift and safeguard our hawker culture.

Conclusion

30 2025 will be our 60^th year as an independent country. Hawkers have always played an integral role in building our country, and hawker culture has been an important part of our Singaporean identity. 2025 will also mark the 5^th anniversary since Hawker Culture in Singapore was successfully inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In conjunction with these milestones, the Government will be reviewing measures to further support hawkers and revitalise our Hawker Culture. Preserving our hawker culture and supporting our hawkers remain important priorities. We are committed to work together with our hawker community and stakeholders to do so. I thank FMAS for organising this year’s Singapore Hawkers’ Seminar and Awards, and would like to convey my heartfelt congratulations to all award winners and nominees again.

31 I will now say a few words in Mandarin.

32 今天，我们共聚在这里，表扬杰出和有进取精神的小贩们。在表扬小贩们的同时，我们也需要展望未来，探讨如何培养并吸引年轻一代加入小贩的行列。我们会继续支持小贩，确保新加坡特有的小贩文化能够传承下去。

33 成为一名小贩， 可以说是一种使命。 这份工作辛苦，工作时间也长。但很多小贩仍然每天坚持为新加坡人提供美味又实惠的食物。

34 小贩们也担心为了保持价格的竞争力而影响收入。我们理解小贩们的担忧。一方面， 我们希望国人能在熟食中心买到价格实惠的美食，另一方面，我们也要确保小贩们能赚取合理的收入。有了合理的收入，小贩行业才能继续地吸引年轻一代的新加坡人步入这个行业。在食品价格与小贩收入这两方面要取得平衡，就需要政府、小贩和消费者的共同努力。

35 为了实现这个目标，政府致力于加强对小贩的支持，为大家提供更有利的经营环境。我们主要通过两方面来支持小贩们： 一是提供更多招聘的选择 ，二是将租金维持在可负担得起的水平。

36 我上个月在国会宣布，国家环境局将从明年 1 月 1 日起，放宽人力政策。我们将允许小贩聘请任何已获得同意书或预先批准同意书的长期探访证（LTVP）或长期探访附加准证（LTVP-Plus）持有者担任摊位助手。希望这项政策放宽后，我们在维护小贩文化的同时，也能帮助缓解小贩们所面对的人力挑战。

37 除了人力政策的调整，我很高兴看到一些小贩中心和小贩，利用了国家环境局推出的生产力援助措施。 例如，"小贩中心生产力计划" （ Productive Hawker Centre Programme）能为采用中央洗碗服务的小贩中心提供最高达 70%的津贴。

38 环境局也通过"小贩生产力资助金"（Hawkers‘ Productivity Grant）与小贩共同分担 80%的费用，鼓励小贩们购买厨房自动化设备和采纳数码解决方案。一些社会企业小贩中心（SEHC）的经营者还提供批量采购服务，以降低原材料的成本。这些措施能够提高小贩的效率，并减轻他们的运营压力。

39 最近，我们观察到一些较受欢迎的小贩中心的摊位，出现了高额投标，引起了公众对食品价格可能上涨的担忧。为了鼓励小贩在投标时，能更好地考虑实际市场情况，我们将调整两项政策。

40 首先，从明年初开始，我们将提供更多信息，帮助有意投标者做出更好的成本和收入的估算。

41 其次，有些投标者提交过高的投标价格来获得热门摊位，盘算他们在三年后，就只需缴付较低的平均市场租金。这种做法对他们生意的可持续性，有着负面的影响。也形成对其他有意竞标， 但却无法用大量资金竞标的对手，造成不公平的竞争。为了抑制这样的情况，我们将延长投标租金的下调期。从第 4 年到第 6 年（也就是摊位的第 2 个租约期），摊位租金的下调幅度将是投标价格与平均市场租金价格差额的一半。只有从第 7 年开始（也就是摊位的第 3 个租约期），才会完全调整到平均市场租金。

42 这项新政策将从今年 11 月起的小贩摊位招标活动生效，现有的小贩将不受影响。

43 调整政策的目的，是为了鼓励有意投标摊位的小贩，能在深思熟虑后才进行投标。从长远来看，我们希望这项新政策，能维持合理的小贩摊位租金价格，帮助小贩在提供实惠食品的当儿，也有合理的收入。我们会继续观察小贩摊位的投标情况，并在适当时做出相关的政策调整。

44 最后，支持和维护小贩文化传承的使命，需要的不仅是政府为小贩所营造的有利的经营环境，更需要广大的公众与消费者，支持小贩的辛劳付出。我感谢小贩协会举办今年的《新加坡小贩研讨会和颁奖典礼》，并再次向所有获奖者和提名者表示衷心的祝贺。