Measures to Diversify Business Offerings of HDB Commercial Premises

Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for National Development (a) whether HDB takes into account the variety of businesses in the HDB estate when granting approvals for HDB commercial unit leases; and (b) whether more proactive measures can be taken to promote diversity of businesses within HDB commercial premises, such as introducing limits on the number of similar services within a certain distance or encouraging existing businesses to expand their offerings.

HDB imposes trade mix controls in smaller rental shop clusters within our HDB Build-to-Order (BTO) developments to ensure that the basic needs of our residents are met. These controls are also imposed for shops in standalone HDB shopping complexes to ensure that there is sufficient variety of shops to serve residents.

For traditional neighbourhood centres (NCs), which typically house a larger number of shops, HDB allows for greater market flexibility in the trade mix. The larger number of shops provides sufficient opportunity for market forces to determine a good trade mix, while still ensuring that residents’ essential needs are met and local heritage is preserved.

However, HDB does set quotas on trades which may cause potential disamenities, for example, eating establishments with noise and exhaust air pollution, massage parlours. Such quotas are also imposed for sold shops for cases where the sold shop owners seek HDB’s approval for a change of use to these trades.

With the rise of online retailers and services complemented with enabling infrastructure like federated lockers, the commercial and retail sector will have to innovate to remain relevant. HDB is in the midst of conducting a Heartland Shops Study which seeks to study the social and economic value of heartland shops for various stakeholders, including residents, the community and business owners. We will consider strengthening policy levers if the study reveals that HDB should play a more proactive role in curating trade mix in our heartland commercial spaces.