Hawker Culture

Senior Minister of State Koh Poh Koon.

Mr Speaker, our hawker centres are an integral part of Singaporeans' daily lives and our national identity. They are vibrant melting pots of diverse and affordable local food that tell stories of Singapore, how different cultures interweave into a unique heritage of who we are as a people. They are community dining rooms where Singaporeans from all walks of life gather, socialise, interact over good food in an informal setting.

Hawker centres are special and quite different from food courts and restaurants. Our hawker centres are special because of the hawkers that make them come to life. They are our community kitchens, where hawkers thrive as masters of their craft to serve comfort food beloved by Singaporeans and famous worldwide.

These hawkers often specialise in specific heritage dishes, such as Hainanese chicken rice, Nyonya laksa, nasi lemak or roti prata. I know this is the time of the day when everyone gets hungry, but I just cannot help but mention some of these delicacies in our hawker centres.

Our hawkers work long hours, often more than 14 hours a day, especially on weekends and public holidays, to serve us our comfort food. Many have dedicated their lives to perfecting specific dishes, often passing down skills, special recipes and cultural traditions from one generation to the next.

Each dish is unique to a particular hawker stall because it is infused with the special recipe and the master touch of the hawker. The flavour of char kway teow from Hong Lim Park Hawker Centre is different from the one at Zion Riverside Food Centre and I like both of them. Yes, doctors do eat char kway teow as well, but I must say, please do it in moderation.

These two char kway teows, they are my favourites and, I am sure, they each have their own hardcore supporters. Like many of you, I go to different hawker centres to savour the authentic differences in flavour, even of the same dish. Each hawker centre has its own character and a different mix of food choices. This is why we all have our own choice of favourite hawker dishes, even our own choice of favourite hawker centres and we often debate endlessly on which hawker centre has the best chicken rice or where we can find the best nasi lemak.

While some hawkers have done well and opened stalls in other hawker centres, and some have even ventured out into the restaurant space, as noted by Mr Keith Chua, the vast majority of stalls at our hawker centres are generally run by stallholders themselves, who prepare each dish meticulously with their unique touches as it is ordered, and retain its individuality, unlike a franchise. So, we can all agree that if a hawker centre becomes replaced by franchises, the texture and the nature of a hawker centre as we know it today, will be quite different.

Hawker centres are such a unique and central part of our national identity that in December 2020, hawker culture in Singapore was inscribed onto the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Singaporeans and Members of this House across both sides of the aisle will agree with me, that this unique Singaporean institution must be nurtured, supported and protected to ensure that our hawker centres and hawkers can thrive for generations to come. Some of our hawker heroes are gathered at the Gallery today – even at this time, some of them have stoically stayed on. I would like to acknowledge their presence and thank them for coming down today even as we discuss this important issue late into the evening. Thank you very much. [Applause.]

To keep this unique character of our hawker centres, our hawker policy will need to reflect three fundamental objectives and principles. First, to ensure that hawker centres remain our community dining room, providing Singaporeans with affordable food options. Second, to ensure hawkers have a decent livelihood and so, ensure that there is long-term sustainability of the hawker trade. Thirdly, to preserve our unique local hawker culture and the identity that is unique here.

These principles apply regardless of how we run our hawker centres, whether they are managed by NEA or by operators under our newer SEHC model. I will address the different operating models later in my speech.

I listened to Mr Leong Mun Wai's speech and that of many other Members today. No one will disagree with the three objectives I spelt out earlier. Each of them are important. But in trying to achieve all three objectives at the same time, we must recognise that there are inherent tensions that, sometimes, pull in opposite directions.

For instance, addressing consumers' desire for lower food prices can inadvertently run counter to our wish to support our hawkers in making a decent living. Without a decent income, it will be difficult to attract young Singaporeans, who have many career options, to enter this trade. Similarly, allowing more foreigners to work in our hawker centres may alleviate cost and manpower concerns for our hawkers, but it could dilute our local hawker culture and identity, and change the feel and nature of our hawker centres. As such, there is a need to strike a balance between the interests of all parties.

Singaporeans face cost-of-living pressures on many fronts, especially in recent years due to global inflation. Global food prices have been volatile in recent years due to supply chain disruptions resulting from climate change and geopolitical events. Several Members have said so as well. We feel this impact keenly because Singapore imports over 90% of our food.

Singaporeans are understandably concerned about how much they pay for food at our hawker centres. Hawkers, like all of us, also feel these pressures, as the cost of ingredients form a large part of their operating cost, as you have heard from some of the speakers earlier as well.

In pricing their food, many hawkers struggle between keeping food affordable for their loyal customers while trying to raise prices to cover the increases in ingredient and manpower costs. This is a struggle that many of us in the House, I believe, can empathise with.

I know that a good number of hawkers have kept their food prices unchanged over the years. One of our hawkers is here with us today. Mr Melvin Chew, who runs Jin Ji Teochew Braised Duck and Kway Chap at Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, shared with me recently, that he had maintained his food prices for over 20 years since the 2000s to offer $3 meals to his customers. While he had previously considered raising prices, I understand he decided to maintain his $3 meals to benefit the older folks staying in the area. It was only after the pandemic that he raised prices to $4 to cope with the rising business costs.

Another example is Mr Macheal s/o Aumeer Ali. Macheal sells wanton noodles at Tanglin Halt Market. He maintained his prices at $3.50 over five years to serve the seniors from Tanglin Halt Estate who form most of his clientele. Only in late-2023 did he increase prices to $4, due to rising costs over the years.

It is not easy for hawkers to earn a fair living. Our hawkers are generally mindful of the profile of the customers they serve and they try their best to hold off any price increases. But hawkers need to be able to price their food realistically and adjust them from time to time.

I echo the anecdote that Mr Edward Chia shared in his speech, about Mr Zuhairi who runs Project Penyek at Senja Hawker Centre. The worries shared by Mr Zuhairi about the rising cost of just one ingredient, chilli, as well as ingredient wastage when customers prefer just to eat the different part of a chicken, may sound quite trivial for us who wonder why there is so much fuss about just a little bit of extra sambal or picking the part of the chicken that we order. But these are the cost components that have a direct impact on a hawker's earnings, which are already not high to begin with.

Absorbing price increases of ingredients would effectively mean a pay cut for a hawker, on top of the already slim margins. I am sure many Singaporeans can empathise with this, even as price increases are not always easy to accept for anyone.

There is another dimension to this, which is that hawkers inherently face limitations to how much they can sell and earn, because they operate the stalls themselves. Many earn less than $1 per meal that is served. But let us take just for illustration, a hawker who manages to make a $1 profit per bowl of noodle he or she sells. He or she will need to sell 200 portions of meals a day for six days a week, in order to earn the $5,000 median income of an average Singaporean. Most do not sell as many meals or earn as much per portion of food they sell. As Mr Edward Chia's example has highlighted, many hawkers barely make 30-cents or 40-cents per meal that they sell.

Over the years, the income of a typical hawker has remained lower than the average Singaporean and corresponds to around the second lowest income decile, which means the lowest 20% in 2022. This low income is also a point noted by Mr Leong Mun Wai earlier in his speech.

Like everyone, our hawkers need an income that is sustainable over time. This has implications for the sustainability of the hawker trade. Today, the median age of our hawkers is 60 years old. As our ageing hawkers gradually retire, we will need new blood to sustain the hawker trade. At present, fortunately nearly all of our cooked food stalls are occupied. But if hawkers cannot make a decent livelihood, the hawker trade would become much less attractive to our younger generation who have many more career options. This is a point also noted by Mr Louis Chua earlier.

Another tension arises as we try to help hawkers manage their manpower costs while we seek to preserve the "local" identity of our hawker culture and heritage. Our policy of only allowing Singaporeans and PRs to be stallholders at hawker centres serves to safeguard this precious aspect of our Singaporean identity.

I recognise that our hawkers face the practical challenge of hiring non-locals to ease manpower constraints. But a full liberalisation for foreign manpower may alter the nature of our hawker centres significantly. So, these are competing tensions and there are, unfortunately, no easy solutions. Our recent moves seek to strike a careful balance, by allowing more LTVP or LTVP+ holders – who have nexus and ties to Singaporean families – to be stall assistants, which would hopefully help in some way.

The Government fully acknowledges the impact of global inflation on the affordability of hawker food and the livelihoods of hawkers. We know the difficult operating environment and challenges our hawkers face, as well as Singaporeans' desire for affordable hawker food. These are difficult tensions to balance and there is no simple solution or easy fix.

We agree with Mr Leong Mun Wai that the Government has a role to play in supporting our hawkers. That is what the Government has been doing. For decades now, since we gathered itinerant street hawkers into our hawker centres and, through our policies, sought to provide hawkers with a conducive operating environment.

As we have restarted building hawker centres from 2011, we set out to better address the needs of Singaporeans. In so doing, we also set out with a forward-looking mindset to test and explore new models that would allow us to safeguard hawker livelihoods and consumers' needs, while keeping our hawker centre landscape responsive to an evolving operating context. I will explain more about the SEHC model later.

We need to find a way, as a society, to keep hawker fare affordable, while ensuring that hawkers can earn a fair living. Underpinning this solution must be a strong social compact that brings all stakeholders together.

The Government foots the cost of building hawker centres and sets policies to support our hawkers and provide them with a conducive operating environment, to ensure that they are able to provide Singaporeans with affordable food at our hawker centres. The local community and private sector have a role in driving ground-up initiatives to support both hawkers and patrons and we heard many examples earlier. Consumers can support our hawkers by patronising them and being prepared to pay a fair price for hawker food to uplift the livelihoods of our hawkers.

The Government has implemented policies to support our hawkers by providing a conducive operating environment. We review these policies regularly to ensure that they are aligned with operating realities on the ground and for hawker centres to serve the needs of both hawkers and consumers. We recognise the cost pressures that hawkers face. In fact, according to an NEA survey, on average in 2023, cost of food ingredients accounts for nearly 60% of the operating cost. Manpower cost comes in second at 20%. Rental made up less than 10% of operating costs in hawker centres. Mr Leong Mun Wai also acknowledges that rent is not a major cost component in his speech earlier.

While Government does not regulate hawker food prices, NEA has measures in place to provide a conducive operating environment for hawkers.

First, on manpower costs, we have been paying close attention to two aspects: improving access to manpower and improving hawkers' productivity. The income of hawkers is very much dependent on how many meals they can serve a day, especially during peak hours. There is only so much that one pair of hands can do. We understand hawkers' challenges in hiring stall assistants. This is something we need to balance with safeguarding the local identity of our hawker culture. We do so by ensuring that being a stallholder at NEA's hawker centres remains reserved for Singapore Citizens and PRs. In doing so, we also ensure low barriers to entry for Singaporeans who wish to enter the F&B business through the hawker trade.

In Mr Leong Mun Wai and Mr Louis Chua's speeches earlier, they suggested allowing one Work Permit holder per stall to work as stall assistants. The suggestion is not inconceivable actually and there are real needs that the hawkers face in sourcing for manpower. But there are differences between hawker centres and other food establishments.

Private coffee shops and F&B establishments operate like SMEs, so they are subjected to the usual quota system that MOM applies to all operating businesses here in Singapore. Our hawker centres, on the other hand, are an integral part of our cultural heritage. They are unique and their local nature is something we want to preserve, which is why we thought very carefully about making such moves. This is why we calibrate any relaxation on restrictions on who can work at our hawker centres very carefully. As I have said earlier, full liberalisation of manpower in hawker centres would significantly alter the makeup and the feel of these centres.

There is really no science to this question. It is really about what we are all prepared to accept as a society. Are we prepared to accept that the hawker centre that we are familiar with changes in nature to something quite different? So, I think this is something that will probably have to evolve over time.

If Members recall, in the early 2010s, there was significant concern among Singaporeans about seeing more foreigners working in hawker centres. And this very issue was raised in this House, which Mr Edward Chia has earlier on also shared with Members what transpired in Parliament in 2010. So, we need to strike a balance. As some Singaporeans may still not be able to accept seeing a significant alteration in a make-up of hawker centres, we will adjust and evolve our policies to take these views into account.

Having said that, we do want to help ease some of the manpower challenges our hawkers face. This is why at Parliament last month, I had announced that starting from 1 January 2025, NEA will allow hawkers to hire LTVP or LTVP+ holders with Letters of Consent (LOC) or Pre-approved LOCs to work as their stall assistants at hawker centres managed by NEA and NEA-appointed operators, regardless of family ties.

Of course, many Members would be aware that prior to this, stallholders could only appoint such LTVP or LTVP+ holders to work as their stall assistants if they had a spousal relationship and even then, on a case-by-case basis. Now, hawkers can hire from an expanded pool of these potential stall assistants who are already part of a Singapore family nexus.

This is one example of how we continually review and adjust our policies to adjust to changing circumstances. But the reality is that each additional headcount is an added cost to our hawkers. So, a more sustainable approach to manpower is to make every person more productive. Therefore, NEA has implemented measures to support hawkers in enhancing their productivity, which can help lighten the pressures of their manpower constraints.

At the centre level, the Productive Hawker Centres (PHC) programme provides up to 70% tiered subsidy for centres to adopt centralised dishwashing for up to four years. At the individual stall level, the Hawkers' Productivity Grant (HPG) provides 80% co-funding for hawkers to purchase kitchen automation equipment and digital solutions, such as queue management systems.

A key business cost hawkers deal with is raw materials. Ms Hazel Poa raised the suggestion on centralised procurement to moderate such costs. This is not a new suggestion. I believe in an earlier Parliamentary Sitting, Mr Melvin Yong did raise one of these suggestions in a PQ. This centralised procurement idea is already present at some SEHCs, where operators have tapped on their network in the F&B and food supply sectors to offer bulk purchasing services. With such services, their stallholders have the option to secure preferential rates for raw ingredients.

But from our experience, there are limitations. So far, the uptake among stallholders has not been widespread as most already have established relationships with their existing suppliers or are quite particular about the source and quality of the ingredients. Remember what I said earlier about the unique nature of our hawker centres is that each stall is run by the hawkers themselves, with unique recipes and special touches. Everyone has something they want to put as special to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Nonetheless, we will continue to support such initiatives where it benefits our hawkers.

Apart from manpower, the Government has also implemented measures to ensure reasonable rent for hawkers and to address concerns on rent. By keeping rent affordable, we can help make the cost of doing business lower for our hawkers, even if it is not by a large percentage, because rent is less than 10% of the operating cost.

Generally, stall rentals at hawker centres are lower than nearby eating establishments, such as coffee shops, food courts and small eateries. For majority of cooked food stallholders in our hawker centres, the median rent is around $1,250 per month and has remained relatively stable for the past 10 years. This has been the case even while overall prices have continued to rise over the decade. This also means, therefore, that the rent is now a smaller component of their costs compared to 10 years ago.

The Government also extends generous subsidies to a segment of our Pioneer hawkers, who make up around 30% of cooked food stallholders. For them, the rent is heavily subsidised at about $300 per month and this can be transferred to the immediate family members of the pioneer hawkers at the same low rent. I believe Mr Melvin Chew whom I spoke about earlier is also a beneficiary of this legacy system.

Let me now touch on rent at NEA-managed hawker centres. The Government builds hawker centres and does not use rent for cost recovery. Let me say that again: the Government builds hawker centres and does not use the rent for cost recovery. The rents are, in fact, determined by what the tenderer bids for and can be as low as $1.

The PSP and Mr Louis Chua raised the issue of rent and the bidding system for stall rentals. Our policy is for non-subsidised stalls in NEA-managed hawker centres to be allocated via a tender system in which the stalls are tendered to the highest bidder, who pays the bid price for the first tenancy period of three years. This process is open, transparent and straightforward for prospective hawkers to understand. It is not a complicated system.

A bidding system enables market mechanisms to work at hawker centres. The process encourages prospective hawkers that are committed and serious to come forward and submit a bid. Before doing so, prospective hawkers would have to take into account the operating realities, business costs and decide on what kind of food they wish to sell.

They know that what they bid will be what they have to pay. Once the stall is opened, consumers will decide. The quality and the price of the food will determine how well the stall will fare and how sustainable the stall will be.

This market mechanism has helped to shape our current hawker centre landscape. It is responsive to consumers' demands and changing expectations for hawker food, and it is fair for both hawkers and consumers. Those who can offer tasty meals that consumers feel are value for money will continue to do well, while those who are priced too high and do not meet consumers' taste expectations will eventually exit.

This works in tandem with other measures by the Government to moderate hawker stall rents, which we regularly review and improve.

Today, there is no reserve rent or minimum bid price. This enables bidders to obtain stalls at low rental rates. In fact, over 300 stalls were obtained at bids below $100 over the last three years. A few in 2023 and 2024 even won bids with rents as low as $1. So, it is not a myth. There are stalls which are going at $1 bid price.

We saw that subletting of stalls led to higher rents in the past. So, we moved in 2012 to disallow such subletting.

After the first tenancy period of three years, rental is adjusted towards the Assessed Market Rent. We recently reviewed and changed this policy to stagger the downward adjustment of tendered rent over a longer period, in fact, over two tenancy renewals instead of one. This will also discourage prospective hawkers from putting in excessively high tender bids.

It is not a perfect system, but collectively, our rental policies at NEA-managed hawker centres have served us reasonably well. Occupancy rates for cooked food stalls have remained high, averaging above 95%.

In 2023, the median successful tender price for cooked food stalls was about $1,800 and about one in five cooked food stalls were awarded at tender prices at or below $500. So, some key numbers here. One in five awarded below $500; more than 300 stalls paying less than $100 a month, some even at $1. In fact, 44% of bidders were actually able to secure their bids below the Assessed Market Rent. So, our system has actually kept rental prices reasonably affordable; in fact, a good number below the Assessed Market Rent. Stall demand remains healthy: in fact, vacant stalls put up for tender received an average of 7.2 bids per stall and are successfully re-tendered within three to six months.

So, overall, the tender system is working. We have made recent changes and we expect to see some positive impact. We will continue to review, taking in suggestions and feedback from Members and from hawkers themselves to continue improving the system.

There are many views on the current price tender system model and what might be a better alternative that could replace it. Even the PSP itself has different views and proposed different options as well. For example, Mr Leong Mun Wai suggested one method based on percentage of gross turnover with a base rent. But this will require a point-of-sale system for every stall in order to be able to track what the takings really are. Ms Hazel Poa also proposed that we abandon the tender system and change it to a balloting one. She also suggested perhaps a fixed rent model as well. As Mr Keith Chua noted, there really would not be a perfect system. But we will keep trying. For example, we also started to do the price quality method at our SEHC models where rent is pre-determined and stalls are awarded by the operators. So, we are open to trying different methods and see what works best.

Let me take this chance to address some of the suggestions that Ms Poa has raised, one of which is to abandon the tender system to a balloting one. Again, this is not a new suggestion. I remember Mr Melvin Yong asking me in a PQ before, probably just about a couple of months ago. Let me explain that while balloting could provide an equal chance to all to obtain a stall at an upfront fixed rate, what balloting could also do is to encourage frivolous applications and excess demand for stalls at popular locations. This may not be fair to prospective tenderers with a genuine intent to set up a new stall because they will see their chances dwindle as more people come in and crowd into that space for a limited number of stalls. And such a situation will not benefit patrons as well.

Ms Poa also suggested a fixed rent model to keep rental costs under control. But the question we must ask is: what price will we use to predetermine the rent? Let us just say we use the assessed market rent, which is professionally determined by valuers. Then, in that case, all prospective hawkers will end up paying this price.

But under today's system, as you heard me say earlier, the tendered rent for about 44% of stalls is actually below the Assessed Market Rent, based on our 2023 data. In fact, as I said earlier, 20% pay less than $500. So, this will definitely help with their business costs. So, under a fixed rent model, close to about half of tenderers will see their rent much higher than it is today.

Mr Louis Chua also proposes a rental cap. I thought it is useful for us to understand how a rental cap could distort the market dynamics. If we set any cap threshold, we give the bidders the assurance that the bids will not go beyond a maximum ceiling. So, that is the upside of a rental cap. However, doing so could also encourage bidders to bid more competitively towards that threshold in order to outprice the competition to secure the stall. So, that could well mean the end of the $1 bid stalls that we have in the system today. This could in turn lead to overall bid prices trending higher and the whole allocation system will no longer be fair and meaningful. Even at less popular centres, the rental cap may also have an unintended consequence by inadvertently setting a price point that drive lower rentals upward toward the cap, as I have explained.

Mr Louis Chua also proposes the Government take back control of all hawker centres. I thank him for his confidence in the Government and the way we manage our hawker centres. In fact, today, the Government already oversees all hawker centres and we have been able to achieve reasonable rents and conducive environment for hawkers through our policies for ensuring accessible and affordable food options.

The Government has been responding to evolving needs and at different points in time, we have tried different management models in order to bring benefit to Singaporeans. While our systems are not perfect, we have worked in partnership with our hawkers and operators to address these. We will continue to listen and engage, and fine-tune what needs to be improved.

I must also say that we should allow some space for the private sector to thrive in this space so there is a diversity of options for both hawkers and consumers. Some hawkers eventually do venture out to other F&B spaces to scale and grow. So, I think we should not do it in a way that actually squeezes out the room for private sector to also be able to thrive in the scene.

At the end of the day, we must ensure that whatever we do is transparent, easily understood by the tenderers and will lead to better outcomes. We must make sure that the cure that we are all proposing is not going to be worse-off than the issue we are trying to resolve, to the detriment of hawkers and consumers.

As Mr Leong has also noted, rent is not really the major cost factor. What hawkers need is customers footfall and fair pricing so that they can have a decent margin and an income on the goods that they sell. Because even if the rent is free, no footfall equals to no income. So, we have to be quite clear that rent being a small component is not going to be the one that will make our hawkers fare better.

We continue to monitor the trends closely, as well as the attention that hawker stall rent has attracted recently. A small percentage of bids can be quite high, especially at popular hawker centres. For example, the recent bid for a stall at Marine Parade Central Food Centre that Members have mentioned.

I must say that this outlier bid is the only one at that level of $10,000 in the last five years. Out of our 7,000 cooked food stalls, only 4% of rent today are above the Assessed Market Rent of $1,250. [Please refer to "Clarification by Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment", Official Report, 13 November 2024, Vol 95, Issue 147, Correction By Written Statement section.]

This means that these people are still in the first tenancy term, because at the end of the third year, this 4% that is above the Assessed Market Rent on today's policy, will revert to the Assessed Market Rent.

So, we have to be quite careful not to abandon a system that has actually worked quite well and benefited many hawkers, just because of a small number of outliers.

There may be situations where prospective tenderers put in overly high bids upfront to secure their preferred stall, expecting their rents to be adjusted downwards to Assessed Market Rent after the first three years. Such bids may not be realistic and may distort prices over time, if they proliferate. So, while the numbers, as I said, are small today, other tenderers could be disadvantaged from entering the hawker trade. We want to nip this in the bud and discourage such extraordinarily high bids.

I announced last week that we will implement two measures to encourage more realistic bidding behaviour that better consider actual market conditions. First and quite important, we will make available more information and online business cost estimation tools. We are introducing this to assist and encourage tenderers to make a more informed decision and to bid realistically, 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.

However, some tenderers may still choose to submit excessively high bids and this is where our second measure comes in. We will stagger downward adjustment of tendered rent over a longer period, over two tenancy renewals instead of one. Doing so serves to deter prospective hawkers from submitting unrealistic bids. After the initial three years, stall rental will be adjusted to 50% of the difference between bid price and Assessed Market Rent when tenancy is renewed. This rental rate will be in place for three more years before fully adjusting to Assessed Market Rent from the seventh year onwards. This new policy takes effect from NEA’s ongoing tender exercise this month. I want to assure existing stallholders that you will not be affected.

Of course, we recognise this is not a cure-all and tenderers could still submit high bids, if they assess that they have a viable business model with that bid. Nonetheless, we hope that these changes will work hand-in-hand to encourage prospective hawkers to bid in a more considered and realistic manner moving forward. We will continue to monitor the tender bidding behaviours closely and review our tenancy policies from time to time to ensure that they stay relevant.

I would now like to turn to the issue of operating models. But before I do so, allow me to reiterate that regardless of how we manage our hawker centres, whether it is by NEA, or operators appointed under our SEHC model, our fundamental principles remain the same – hawkers and consumers remain at the heart of our policies.

There have been many comments about the SEHC model by Members today. Let me start by setting the context of why we first adopted the SEHC model.

In 2011, when we restarted building hawker centres, this was with Singaporeans in mind, to meet the community’s rising needs for access to a variety of food options at affordable prices, especially in areas under-served with F&B options.

Building hawker centres alone was not enough. We also needed to set up our new centres for success. This meant exploring new models and being open to different approaches that would allow us to achieve our objectives to safeguard hawker livelihoods and consumers’ needs, while adapting to an evolving operating context far different from when we first started building hawker centres to resettle street hawkers.

Foremost on our minds was to ensure that our new centres would be vibrant. Vibrancy is important not just to hawkers but consumers as well. There was a time when residents were unhappy that hawker centres were not opening long enough to serve their dining needs. In fact, this issue was raised before and debated in Parliament too, back in the 2000s. In recent years, we have also received feedback from residents and the community about operating hours for hawker centres and the need to ensure they are vibrant.

In short, managing hawker centres can be a complex undertaking. Hawker centres need to be vibrant with good visitorship and footfall. They need to provide a diverse food mix that responds to the evolving needs of changing demographics and be adaptable, and set up with the necessary conditions to be viable and sustainable for the long term. All these require the right business acumens to put together. Government agencies do not have the abilities or instincts to operate businesses.

This is the context for developing the SEHC model. We assessed the SEHC model to have various benefits.

First, SEHC operators possess industry knowledge and experience. They can leverage their expertise in F&B and stall management to ensure the vibrancy of new centres. Indeed, many have done so by developing a variety of localised programmes, including initiatives tailored to the community to drive visitorship and incubation programmes to provide business advice and support to aspiring hawkers.

Second, SEHC operators can leverage their F&B networks to curate food mix and support stallholders to fine-tune their menu, such as through food tastings. This supports both hawkers and consumers, allowing the hawker centres to feature food that meet patrons’ expectations, which in turn supports hawkers’ businesses.

Third, SEHC operators can introduce new and innovative practices to support stallholders in navigating changing operating contexts and industry developments, such as onboarding onto digital and online ordering platforms. This helps our hawker centres evolve and keep up with trends.

Good curation and visitorship are important ingredients for a vibrant hawker centre. These allow hawkers to thrive and earn a fair livelihood. In turn, when hawkers find it viable to operate stalls for longer hours, a centre can better meet the dining needs of the residents and community. These are the objectives that had to be met – and we believe can be met – by the SEHC management model.

As with any models, there will be operational issues that we need to continuously calibrate and make adjustments from time to time. We will continue to engage SEHC operators and hawkers to make necessary changes, as and when needed.

The SEHC model was put in place in 2011. Today, 14 out of our 121 hawker centres are managed by SEHC operators appointed by NEA. In developing the model, we sought to strike a balance between ensuring: patrons’ needs for a hawker centre are met, including access to affordable food options and meals across the day; and hawkers' needs for a conducive operating environment to make a reasonable livelihood. The SEHC operator pays Assessed Market Rent, but also bids for a management fee from the Government to operate the centre as part of the tender. So, the cost of operating an SEHC is partially borne by the Government. We have safeguards in place to ensure that operators do not profiteer and are expected to work closely with NEA as well as hawkers, to consider the interests and needs of both hawkers and residents.

In Mr Leong Mun Wai's speech earlier, he claimed that the operator of Jurong West Hawker Centre, JW50 Hawker Heritage, paid $4.86 million to Government to manage Jurong West Hawker Centre. I just want to clarify that this is actually incorrect. This amount is actually the management fee the Government pays to JW50 Hawker Heritage to run the centre which I have earlier mentioned. So, they do not pay us $4.86 million. We pay them $4.86 million.

In fact, NEA pays this to JW50 over a span of nine years. So, as you can see, this is at a significant cost that is borne by Government over time.

As you heard from Mr Ang Wei Neng earlier, when he shared about the Jurong West Hawker Centre, the hawkers who are there pay about $1,000-plus for rental, which is quite similar to what other hawkers in NEA-managed hawker centres also pay.

This kind of management model is also not the kind of business environment for hawkers that you could find in many other cities. Mr Leong gave the example of New York city. I believe that Mr KF Seetoh will be very familiar with the kind of high rental and labour costs that are faced by hawkers, given his experience with Urban Hawker in New York. I think Members who are interested can Google Mothership – there are quite a few articles written about this. I think Mr Edward Chia had shared earlier that some hawkers that are operating in New York face high rental costs, operating costs, ingredient costs, manpower costs and some of them have actually exited as well.

This is an illustration of how through our investment in hawker centres. Through our various policies, we have tried to keep costs low and manageable for hawkers here, so they can continue to thrive.

Let me talk about rent and operating costs in the SEHC model. When submitting tender proposals, prospective SEHC operators must also include their proposed stall rentals and other operating costs that would be charged to stallholders. To provide stability for stallholders, upon award of the tender, operators are not allowed to vary hawkers’ rent and other operating charges over the tenancy term and must keep costs transparent.

Furthermore, under NEA’s Staggered Rent Scheme, operators are required to implement lower rentals in the first two years of the centres’ operations at 80% and 90% of stall rent respectively. This helps new stallholders coming into these new centres manage operating costs as they build their clientele, while the centre gradually establishes itself.

Second, to ensure fair operating conditions for hawkers. I would like to address the specific concerns raised by Mr Leong about tenancy agreements. Such conditions are part of the tenancy agreements between the SEHC operators and the stallholders. The operators put in place the necessary conditions to account for the needs of the community. For example, operating hours specify that stallholders must open their stalls for a specific number of days and hours. This serves to ensure that centres would be vibrant and have sufficient stalls in operation to serve meals for residents throughout the day.

Nevertheless, conditions are also in place to take care of the well-being of our hawkers. NEA provided guidelines on the terms of such tenancy agreements, including on termination clauses, liquidated damages clauses and operating hours. For instance, on operating hours, stallholders are not required to work more than five days a week or eight hours a day. These are guidelines that operators need to comply with before using their tenancy agreements with stallholders. Operators are also required to explain the tenancy agreement to stallholders in simple terms for the stallholders' understanding, before they sign it. Once again, there is a fine balance needed to look after the interests of both our hawkers and our community, for whom hawker centres are built for.

Third, to ensure that operators serve the hawkers and the community in accordance with SEHCs’ agreement with NEA, operators must plough back at least 50% of any surpluses into programmes that benefit the hawker centres and/or their stallholders. You can imagine that SEHC operators may generate operating surpluses in some years and incur losses in some other years. But when surpluses are available, operators have run initiatives to raise footfall and business levels to benefit stallholders, such as providing shuttle bus services at Yishun Park Hawker Centre and organising festive events at Bukit Canberra Hawker Centre. Some operators have also tapped on their surpluses to help the stallholders reduce their operating costs, such as for cleaning.

Also, SEHC operators, as part of their tender proposals, must propose ways to ensure affordable food options are available. It is for the SEHC operators to propose and set a price. It is not for NEA to dictate what is a reasonable price. This is some flexibility we accord them and they will take market conditions into account when they put up a proposal.

So far, operators have committed that all stalls in their centres will provide at least one value meal option. This is not an attempt to force hawkers to sell all of their dishes at low prices. Instead, the intent is for operators to work with hawkers to offer a range of food offerings at different price points. This provides more choices for patrons if they want or need it and is especially intended to support those with lower-income.

However, value meals only account for around 5% to 20% of meals sold in SEHCs, so it is actually not the bulk of the revenue source for hawkers at SEHCs. Hawkers therefore still retain flexibility to offer other food items and sell them at appropriate prices, so that they can continue to earn an overall fair living.

Hawkers are not expected to make a loss selling value meals. SEHC operators can propose to revise the price of such value meals options, which NEA will review based on the market situation and the stallholders’ ability to make a fair livelihood. This has, in fact, been done before, at Ci Yuan Hawker Centre, where the price has been reviewed and adjusted, based on feedback from operators and hawkers.

NEA remains open to consider other suggestions that operators may propose, based on their viability and feasibility to ensure that sufficient affordable options are provided at the SEHCs. SEHC operators must also engage hawkers through regular Hawker Feedback Group sessions. These are held at least once every quarter, where operators gather feedback and ideas from their stallholders to improve the hawker centres and the hawkers’ livelihoods.

NEA has worked closely with hawkers and operators as well as other stakeholders to refine the SEHC model over the years. We will continue to listen to concerns and input to evolve and improve the model as we go along.

Sir, with our efforts over the years, the SEHC model is generally working well. Our SEHCs have brought overall benefits to hawkers and patrons alike, and are well-established within their communities. SEHC operators have curated food stalls in their SEHCs to ensure good quality and variety, and kept their centres open for all three meals to meet patrons’ dining needs. Average occupancy at SEHCs remains high with low stall turnover, comparable to NEA-managed centres.

While the comparison in termination numbers at SEHCs as compared to NEA-managed hawker centres cited by Mr Leong are factual – he said about 8% versus 3% – they do need to be put into context. The average termination rate cited for SEHCs, which is the 8% cited by Mr Leong, also accounted for new SEHCs that have just opened and are starting out. During this period, new centres tend to have some attrition and this is a natural part of business volatility. When businesses at new SEHCs move into a steady state, stall termination tend to stabilise and in fact, are no different compared to NEA-managed hawker centres.

There continues to be high interest in applying for stalls at SEHCs, such as those recently opened at Anchorvale, Buangkok and Woodleigh. Based on NEA’s recent surveys, over 97% of patrons and stallholders were overall satisfied with SEHCs, which is comparable to the satisfaction level at NEA-managed centres. Also, SEHCs have performed better in cleanliness, centre management and place-making activities.

Operating costs for stallholders at SEHCs, including rentals, remain manageable. The median stall rent at SEHCs is comparable to non-subsidised stalls at similar NEA-managed hawker centres. When comparing rental, it should not just be based on absolute rental, but one should also consider aspects such as stall size and amenities in the centre.

Nonetheless, we do not take all this for granted. We also recognise that some operators have done better while others have faced implementation challenges along the way, especially when they first get started. This is also why we renew the management of SEHCs via an open tender after the incumbent operators’ final tenancy term. It is a transparent process that allows incumbents that have done well to be considered favourably, while weeding out poorer-performing operators if necessary. Such a system enables healthy competition between the SEHC operators and motivates them to refine and improve their management models over time.

As we roll out the SEHC model to more new hawker centres, we will continue to monitor the implementation of the SEHC model closely and work with hawkers and operators to ensure that our new hawker centres continue to serve the interests of patrons well and ensure the well-being of our hawkers.

Next, I will address the concerns raised about the affordability of food at hawker centres. Today, our hawker centres across our island continue to provide the most affordable cooked food options for Singaporeans. That is why we often receive requests from residents to have a hawker centre in their neighbourhoods, even when it is already well served by other F&B outlets. As MPs on the ground, we often get such requests.

Our key focus therefore must be to ensure a sufficient supply of hawker stalls to cater to residents in all regions. We are committed to doing so and we will continue maintaining our existing hawker centres as we as we build new ones. Fourteen new centres are currently in operation and the locations of the other six centres have been announced.

The Government does not directly regulate or control food prices across the board. Doing so would also distort the true cost of hawker food, which would in turn depress our hawkers’ earnings. This would result in an unsustainable hawker trade, discourage new hawkers from joining the trade and would eventually affect everyone if affordable hawker food becomes less available. It is not prudent in the long run and hawkers would bear the brunt while also experiencing the same cost-of-living pressures just like everyone else.

We have to be careful about over-regulating across the board. Broadly speaking, market competition is an important self-regulating force for hawker food prices. We have been talking about affordable food, but “affordable” might not necessarily equate to “cheap”. They are actually two different things. As I mentioned earlier in my speech, hawkers consider various factors when pricing their food, including operating costs and the need to remain competitive with other stalls. I have spoken to hawkers, a young hawker, one of them, Darren, who shared that many of them practise what he would say “honest pricing”, in which they price their food to reflect the true cost and quality of ingredients, and apply a reasonable but modest profit margin to sustain their livelihood. Hawkers know that consumers are discerning and they need to be honest with their pricing.

In allowing the market to function, another hawker, Mr Noorman from Nasi Lemak Ayam Taliwang, I think he is there in the gallery as well, he said, "We can let our hawkers and their customers find the right balance of where the price point for hawker food should be". And over time, this enables a sustainable hawker centre landscape that is responsive to both hawkers’ and consumers’ needs.

To help Singaporeans cope with cost-of-living concerns, you heard from Senior Parliamentary Secretary Shawn Huang earlier that the Government has introduced broad-based measures such as providing CDC Vouchers under the enhanced Assurance Package. As you heard, these vouchers can be used at participating hawker stalls, to help both the households and the hawkers. Thus far, around $650 million of CDC Vouchers that has been disbursed have been used at participating heartland shops, including stalls across all hawker centres.

I am heartened to hear from Mr Edward Chia’s speech that hawkers at Senja Hawker Centre shared that these CDC Vouchers have contributed directly to their revenue and brought in new customers for their businesses. The Government is looking at more ways that we can support Singaporeans and hawkers, and will announce more details when ready.

I am also heartened that many businesses and community groups are also stepping up and doing their part to help Singaporeans and hawkers. Various MPs also shared their local initiatives, but I will just share maybe a couple more.

In 2023, the Marine Parade Citizens’ Consultative Committee, the Marine Parade Merchant’s Association and Katong Joo Chiat Business Association worked together with some hawkers in three hawker centres and coffee shops 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.

These are measures, ground-up activities that also go to help both those in need and the hawkers themselves. Meaningful ones. The private sector has also introduced similar initiatives, and you heard from Mr Chia earlier, for example, DBS’ ongoing Support Our Heartlands initiative and their earlier "5 Million Hawker Meals" scheme that was shared. I am deeply encouraged by these initiatives which support our hawkers and the broader community, and I hope to see many more of them as we continue to uplift and safeguard our hawker culture.

I agree with Mr Leong, that to safeguard our hawker trade for future generations, one of our key priorities is to nurture a new generation of young hawkers to take over the reins. To attract more Singaporeans to join the hawker trade, we need to first ensure that hawkers are able to earn a fair living, work in a clean and comfortable environment, and receive the support that they require. These underpin our policies, as I have mentioned earlier.

NEA has been working closely with hawkers and stakeholders to attract new hawker entrants and equip them with skillsets to boost their chances of success. This includes three key programmes that NEA runs to help aspiring hawkers to kickstart their businesses: the Incubation Stall Programme, Hawkers’ Development Programme and the Hawkers Succession Scheme.

Mr Leong and Mr Louis Chua proposed setting up a hawker academy to be a focal point for training young aspiring hawkers in Singapore. In fact, we already have a similar academy in place. Under our current Hawkers Development Programme, NEA and SkillsFuture Singapore appoints the Asian Culinary Institute under Nanyang Polytechnic to provide training to aspiring hawkers and equip them with the necessary skills for their businesses, such as business strategy and business pricing. So, that concept is already in action today.

We are encouraged to see aspiring hawkers enter the trade through these means, with some choosing to preserve traditional recipes, while others infuse new, creative and innovative ideas to modernise hawker fare. This diversity contributes to the richness and depth of our evolving hawker culture.

Furthermore, SEHC operators also run various incubation programmes to support their stallholders to ease into the hawker trade. After all, it is in their interest to make sure that the hawkers succeed in their centres. For example, Fei Siong Social Enterprise Pte Ltd introduced the Entrepreneurship Programme at Woodleigh Village Hawker Centre. The programme provides mentorship and support for young hawkerpreneurs in areas such as culinary skills, stall set-up, menu creation and marketing activities. Fei Siong also provided financial assistance, such as purchasing cooking equipment at interest-free instalments.

Collectively, the programmes by NEA and SEHC operators have helped to inject younger entrants into the hawker scene. To date, over 70 hawkers have joined the trade through these programmes, with a median age of 37. We will continue to review the programme outcomes and identify other areas to better encourage and support aspiring hawkers to enter and stay in the hawker trade. We will provide more details next year.

Mr Leong proposed that hawker centre management be taken over by a new Government agency to be called Hawker Singapore. Again, I thank him for putting his trust in the Government to manage our hawker centres well. But in fact, I would say that we already have a dedicated division now in NEA called the Hawker Centres Group looking after this with place managers on the ground that interact closely with our hawkers. Therefore, what he is proposing is a re-organisation of an existing dedicated team that is already functioning.

But what is more important is that whatever entity that oversees the management of hawker centres should be plugged in to the day-to-day concerns of individual centres and be responsive to its evolving needs. This is what our place managers does on a day-to-day basis, and our SEHC operators are also able to do this, too. NEA works closely with hawkers, as well as industry associations, like the Federation of Merchant Associations of Singapore, and we assign place managers to each hawker centre so that the nexus is tight.

I turn back now to the Motion that is being debated today. Sir, external circumstances, such as inflation, have presented challenges for our hawkers and Singaporeans alike, especially in recent years. We deeply understand these sentiments. For hawkers, increases in operating costs, especially for ingredients, can mean having to absorb some of these costs or making the difficult decision to raise prices for customers.

For Singaporeans, having to pay 50 cents or a dollar more for hawker meals could feel like a dent in their wallets, as prices of other daily essentials also add up. As the Government, and with the support of our local community and the private sector, we are doing what we can to mitigate the impact of these rising costs.

I want to thank Members who have acknowledged the practical realities we operate in and for reaffirming the Government's efforts to do right by our hawkers. At the heart of the debate today is how we can sustain and grow our invaluable hawker culture so that it continues to thrive. This is something that the Government is fully committed to do. But we must recognise that there are often competing objectives and, as consumers, we can all play an important role in this, too.

Many Singaporeans are worried about the impact of global inflationary pressures on the cost of living, and understandably so. However, for hawkers to earn a fair living, they need to price food realistically. While price increases are not always easy to accept, we must remember that how much a hawker can sell a bowl of rice or noodles for is dependent on how much Singaporeans are prepared to pay. Ultimately, hawkers need the support of consumers. We must form a strong social compact to ensure that our hawker culture can continue to thrive and Singaporeans can continue to enjoy hawker fare for many more generations to come.

Mr Speaker, allow me to conclude. We all want our hawker centres and hawker culture to continue to thrive, but it entails a fine balancing act. Overall, the Government has taken a calibrated and long-term view in crafting our policies. We have put in place comprehensive measures that strike a careful balance between ensuring affordable hawker food options and supporting hawkers with a conducive business environment, while also safeguarding the long-term sustainability of the hawker trade, local hawker culture and heritage. This would not have been possible without the readiness and commitment from our hawkers and hawker associations to work with the Government. I thank them for their input and their partnership, which have helped us improve our policies to balance between competing objectives and chart the best way forward for both hawkers and Singaporeans. We may not always get this right the first time. With your inputs and feedback, and as circumstances change, we will review and adjust our policies. We have done so in the past and we will continue to fine-tune and improve.

What is important in all of these adjustments is that our hawkers must be able to earn a fair livelihood. This is critical for our hawker culture to thrive for a long time. Without our hawkers as torchbearers, our hawker centres will be empty and our hawker culture will disappear. This is why I support the proposed amendment from Mr Edward Chia. I invite Members to join me in expressing support as well, because Mr Chia is right that the Government should continue its support for hawkers and hawker culture so that Singaporeans can continue to enjoy good and affordable hawker food while ensuring that hawkers can earn a fair livelihood.

The year 2025 will be our 60th year as an independent country. It will also mark the fifth anniversary since the UNESCO inscription for hawker culture in Singapore. Hawkers have always played an integral role in building our country and hawker culture has been an important part of our national Singaporean identity. As I announced last week at the Singapore Hawkers Seminar and Awards, in conjunction with these milestones, the Government will be reviewing measures to further support hawkers and revitalise our hawker culture. We will announce more details during the Committee of Supply debates next year.

To Members of this House and to all Singaporeans, I want to assure you that safeguarding our hawker culture remains an important priority for this Government. We are committed to work together with our hawker community and our stakeholders to do so. Together, we can sustain our hawker culture to thrive for generations to come. Sir, allow me to speak in Mandarin now.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Mr Speaker, our hawker centres are an integral part of Singaporeans' daily lives and our cultural identity. They are vibrant melting pots of diverse and affordable local food that tell stories of Singapore – how different cultures interweave into a unique heritage of who we are as a people. They are community dining rooms, where Singaporeans from all walks of life gather, socialise and interact over good food in an informal setting. Hawker centres are special and quite different from food courts and restaurants. Our hawker centres are special because of the hawkers that make them come to life. They are our community kitchens where hawkers thrive as masters of their craft to serve comfort food beloved by Singaporeans and known worldwide.

These hawkers often specialise in specific local dishes such as Hainanese chicken rice, nasi lemak, Nyonya laksa or roti prata. They work long hours, often more than 14 hours a day especially on weekends and public holidays to serve us our comfort food. Many have dedicated their lives to perfecting specific dishes, often passing down skills, recipes and cultural traditions from one generation to the next.

Each dish is unique to a particular hawker stall. The flavor of char kway teow from Hong Lim Park Hawker Centre is different from the one at Zion Riverside Food Centre and I like both of them. They are my favorites and they each have their own die-hard followers. Like many of you, I go to different hawker centres to savour the authentic differences of the same dish. Each hawker centre has its own character and a different mix of food choices.

This is why we all have our own choice of favorite hawker dishes and often debate endlessly on which hawker centre has the best chicken rice and where the best nasi lemak can be found.

While some hawkers have done well and opened stalls in other hawker centres, and some have even ventured out into the restaurant space, the vast majority of stalls at our hawker centres are generally run by stallholders themselves, preparing each meal with their unique touches as it is ordered and retaining its individuality, unlike a franchise.

Hawker centres are such a unique and central part of our national identity that in December 2020, hawker culture in Singapore was inscribed onto the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

I think Singaporeans and Members across both sides of the aisle will agree, that this unique Singaporean institution must be nurtured, supported and protected, to ensure that our hawker centres and hawkers can thrive for generations to come. Some of our hawker heroes are gathered at the gallery today – I would like to show appreciation to their contributions and welcome and thank them for coming down today as we discuss this important issue.

To keep this unique character of our hawker centres, our hawker policy will need to reflect three fundamental objectives and principles: to ensure that hawker centres remain our community dining room, providing Singaporeans with affordable food options; to ensure hawkers have a decent livelihood and so ensure that there is long-term sustainability of the hawker trade and attract young people to join the trade; and to preserve our unique local hawker culture and identity.

I think no one will disagree with these objectives. Each of them are important. But in trying to achieve all three objectives at the same time, we must recognise that there are inherent tensions that sometimes pull in opposite directions. For instance, addressing consumers’ desire for lower food prices can inadvertently run counter to our wish to support our hawkers in making a decent living. Without a decent income, it will be difficult to attract young Singaporeans who have many career options to enter this trade. Similarly, allowing more foreigners to work in our hawker centres may alleviate cost and manpower concerns for our hawkers, but it could dilute our local hawker culture and identity and change the feel of our hawker centres. As such, there is a need to strike a balance between the interests of all parties.

Singaporeans face cost-of-living pressures on many fronts, especially in recent years due to global inflation. Global food prices have been volatile in recent years due to supply chain disruptions resulting from climate change and geopolitical events. We feel this impact keenly because Singapore imports over 90% of our food. Singaporeans are understandably concerned about how much they pay for food at our hawker centres. Hawkers, like all of us, also feel these pressures, as the cost of ingredients form a huge part of their cost, which is 60% to 70%.

In pricing their food, many hawkers struggle between keeping food affordable for their loyal customers while having to raise prices to cover the increases in ingredient and manpower costs. This is a struggle that many of us in the House empathise with.

I know that a good number of hawkers have kept their food prices unchanged over the years. One of our hawkers, Mr Melvin Chew, who runs Jin Ji Teochew Braised Duck and Kway Chap at Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, shared with me that he had maintained his food prices for over 20 years since the 2000s to offer $3 duck rice to customers. I understand he tried to maintain his $3 meals to benefit the older folks staying in the area. It was only after the pandemic that he raised prices to $4 to cope with rising business costs.

It is not easy for hawkers to earn a fair living. Our hawkers are generally mindful of the profile of the customers they serve and they try their best to hold off raising prices of their food. But hawkers need to be able to price their food realistically and adjust them from time to time. Absorbing price increases of ingredients would effectively mean a pay cut for a hawker, on top of slim profit margins. I am sure many Singaporeans can empathise with this, even as price increases are not always easy to accept.

There is another dimension to this, which is that hawkers inherently face limitations to how much they can sell and earn, because they operate the stall themselves. Many earn less than $1 per meal served. But let us take, for example, a hawker who manages to make a $1 profit per bowl of noodle. He or she will need to sell 200 portions a day for six days a week, in order to earn the $5,000 median salary of Singaporeans. Most do not sell as many meals or earn as much per meal. As Mr Edward Chia’s example has highlighted, many hawkers barely make a 30-cent or 40-cent margin per meal they sell.

Like everyone, our hawkers need an income that is sustainable over time. This has implications for the sustainability of the hawker trade. Today, the median age of our hawkers is 60 years old. As our ageing hawkers gradually retire, we will need new blood to sustain the hawker trade. But if hawkers cannot make a decent livelihood, the hawker trade would become much less attractive to our younger generation who have many more career options.

Another tension arises as we try to help hawkers manage their manpower costs while we seek to preserve the “local” identity of our hawker culture and heritage. Our policy of only allowing Singaporeans and PRs to be stallholders at hawker centres serves to safeguard this precious aspect of our Singaporean identity. I recognise that our hawkers face the practical challenge of hiring non-locals to ease manpower constraints. But a full liberalisation for foreign manpower may alter the nature of our hawker centres significantly. These are competing tensions and there are no easy solutions.

We know the difficult operating environment and challenges our hawkers face, as well as Singaporeans’ desire for affordable hawker food. These are difficult tensions to balance. And there is no simple solution or easy fix.

We agree with Mr Leong that the Government has a role to play in supporting our hawkers. That is what the Government has been doing. For decades now, since we gathered itinerant street hawkers into our hawker centres, and, through our policies, sought to provide hawkers with a conducive operating environment. And as we restarted building hawker centres from 2011, we set out to better address the needs of Singaporeans. In so doing, we also set out with a forward-looking mindset to test and explore new models that would allow us to safeguard hawker livelihoods and consumers’ needs, while keeping our hawker centre landscape responsive to an evolving operating context. I will explain more about the SEHC model later.

We need to find a way as a society to keep hawker fare affordable, while ensuring that hawkers can earn a fair living. Underpinning this solution must be a strong social compact that brings all stakeholders together. The Government foots the cost of building hawker centres and sets policies to support our hawkers and provide them with a conducive operating environment, to ensure that they are able to provide Singaporeans with affordable food at our hawker centres. The local community and private sector have a role in driving ground-up initiatives to support both hawkers and patrons and consumers can support our hawkers by patronising them and being prepared to pay a fair price for hawker food to uplift the livelihoods of our hawkers.

Let me now touch on rent at NEA-managed hawker centres. The Government builds hawker centres and does not use rent for cost recovery. The rents are determined by what the tenderer bids for. Our policy is for non-subsidised stalls in NEA-managed hawker centres to be allocated via a tender system, in which stalls are tendered to the highest bidder, who pays the bid price for the first tenancy period of three years. This process is open, transparent and straightforward for prospective hawkers to understand.

A bidding system enables market mechanisms to work at hawker centres. The process encourages prospective hawkers that are committed and serious to come forward and submit a bid. Before doing so, prospective hawkers have to take into account operating realities and business costs and decide on what food they wish to sell. Once a stall is open, consumers will decide. The quality and price of food will determine how well the stall fares and how sustainable the stall will be. This market mechanism has helped to shape our current hawker centre landscape. It is responsive to consumers’ demands and changing expectations for hawker food, and fair for both hawkers and consumers.

This works in tandem with other measures by the Government to moderate hawker stall rents, which we regularly review and improve. Today, there is no reserve rent or minimum bid prices. This enables bidders to obtain stalls at low rental rates. In fact, over 300 stalls were obtained at bids below $100 over the last three years – a few in 2023 and 2024 won bids with rent as low as $1! After the first tenancy period of three years, rental is adjusted towards the Assessed Market Rate. We recently reviewed and changed this policy to stagger the downward adjustment of tendered rent over a longer period. This will also discourage prospective hawkers from putting in excessively high tender bids.

Collectively, our rental policies at NEA-managed hawker centres have served us well. However, any system will have its pros and cons. For example, some Opposition Members have suggested that we abandon the tender system to a balloting one or other options. Let me first explain the benefits of a bidding system.

While balloting could provide an equal chance to all to obtain a stall at an upfront fixed rate, what balloting could also do is to encourage frivolous applications and excess demand for stalls, especially at popular centres. This may not be fair to prospective tenderers with genuine intent to set up a new stall as they see their chances dwindle.

Others have suggested a fixed rent model to keep rental costs under control. But what price will we use to pre-determine the rent? Let us say we use the Assessed Market Rate. Then all prospective hawkers will end up paying this price. But under today’s system, the tendered rent for about 44% of stalls is below the Assessed Market Rate, based on 2023 data; 20% of bidders pay rents below $500. This low rent helps with their business costs. If we adopt a fixed rent model, then nearly 50% of hawkers will pay much higher rentals.

We will stay open to consider different models. In fact, we have tried out price-quality models at SEHCs where the rent is predetermined, and stalls are curated by the operators. In summary, when making policies, we must ensure transparency so that bidders can understand easily, while also bringing better outcomes.

We continue to monitor the trends closely, as well as the attention that hawker stall rent has attracted recently. A small percentage of bids can be quite high, especially at popular hawker centres, for example, the recent bid for a cooked food stall at Marine Parade Central Food Centre which exceeded $10,000. There may be situations where prospective tenderers put in overly high bids upfront to secure their preferred stall, expecting their rents to be adjusted downwards to Assessed Market Rate after the first three years.

I announced last week that we will implement two measures, to encourage more realistic bidding behaviour that better consider actual market conditions. First, we will make available more information and online business cost estimation tools. We are introducing this to assist and encourage tenderers to make a more informed decision and bid realistically. However, some tenderers may still choose to submit excessively high bids.

Hence, we will stagger downward adjustment of tendered rent over a longer period. Doing so serves to deter prospective hawkers from submitting unrealistic bids. After the initial three years, stall rental will be adjusted to 50% of the difference between bid price and Assessed Market Rate when tenancy is renewed. This rental rate will be in place for three more years before fully adjusting to AMR from the seventh year onwards.

Nonetheless, we hope that these changes will work hand in hand to encourage prospective hawkers to bid in a more considered and realistic manner moving forward. We will continue to monitor the tender bidding behaviours closely and review our tenancy policies from time to time to ensure that they stay relevant.

There have been many comments about the SEHC model by Members today. I want to reiterate that regardless of how we manage our hawker centres, whether it is by NEA or operators under our SEHC model, our fundamental principles remain the same. Hawkers and consumers remain at the heart of our policies.

In 2011, we restarted building hawker centres. This was with Singaporeans in mind, to meet the community’s rising needs for access to a variety of food options at affordable prices. Building hawker centres alone was not enough. We also needed to set up our new centres for success. This meant exploring new models and being open to different approaches that would allow us to achieve our objectives to safeguard hawker livelihoods and consumers’ needs while adapting to an evolving operating context.

In addition, foremost on our minds was to ensure that our new centres would be vibrant. There was a time when residents were unhappy that hawker centres were not opening long enough to serve their dining needs. In fact, this issue was raised before and debated in Parliament too, back in 2010. In recent years, we have also received feedback from residents and the community about operating hours for hawker centres.

This is the context for developing the SEHC model. We assessed the SEHC model to have various benefits. First, SEHC operators possess industry knowledge and experience. They can leverage their expertise in F&B and stall management to ensure the vibrancy of new centres. Second, SEHC operators can leverage their F&B networks to curate food mix and support. Third, SEHC operators can introduce new and innovative practices to support stallholders in navigating changing operating contexts and industry developments, such as onboarding onto digital and online ordering platforms.

Good curation and visitorship are important ingredients for a vibrant hawker centre. These allow hawkers to thrive and earn a fair livelihood, and as a result, a hawker centre can better meet the dining needs of the residents and community. We believe these objectives can be met by the SEHC management model.

As with all models, there will be operational issues that we need to continuously calibrate and make adjustments from time to time. We will continue to engage SEHC operators and hawkers to make changes where necessary.

Today, 14 out of our 121 hawker centres are managed by SEHC operators appointed by NEA.

In developing the model, we sought to strike a balance between ensuring patrons’ needs for affordable food options and meals and hawkers' needs for a conducive operating environment. We have safeguards in place to ensure that operators do not profiteer and are expected to work closely with NEA as well as hawkers, to consider the interests and needs of both hawkers and residents.

First, on rent and operating costs. When submitting tender proposals, prospective SEHC operators must also include their proposed stall rentals and other operating costs charged to stallholders. Upon award of the tender, operators are not allowed to vary hawkers’ rent and other operating charges. Furthermore, under NEA’s Staggered Rent Scheme, operators are required to implement lower rentals in the first two years of the centres’ operation.

Second, to ensure fair operating conditions for hawkers. Such conditions are part of the tenancy agreements between the SEHC operators and the stallholders. For example, operating hours specify that stallholders must open their stalls for a specific number of days and hours. This serves to ensure that centres would be vibrant and have sufficient stalls in operation to serve meals for residents throughout the day. Nonetheless, conditions are also in place to take care of the well-being of our hawkers. For instance, on operating hours, stallholders are not required to work more than five days a week or eight hours a day. These are guidelines that operators need to comply with, and operators are also required to explain the tenancy agreement to stallholders in simple terms for stallholders’ understanding before they sign it.

Third, to ensure that operators serve the hawkers and the community. In accordance with SEHCs’ agreement with NEA, operators must plough back at least 50% of any surpluses into programmes that benefit the hawker centres and their stallholders. Operators have run initiatives to raise footfall and business levels to benefit stallholders, such as providing shuttle bus services at Yishun Park Hawker Centre and organising festive events at Bukit Canberra Hawker Centre. Operators have committed that all stalls in their centres will provide at least one value meal option. I would like to emphasise that value meals only account for around 5% to 20% of meals sold in SEHCs. Hawkers still retain flexibility to offer other food items and sell them at appropriate prices, so that they can continue to earn an overall fair living. Hawkers are not expected to make a loss selling value meals. SEHC operators can propose to revise the price of such value meals options, which NEA will review based on the market situation and stallholders’ ability to make a fair livelihood.

With our efforts over the years, the SEHC model is generally working well. Based on NEA’s recent surveys, over 97% of patrons and stallholders were overall satisfied with SEHCs. Average occupancy at SEHCs remains high with low stall turnover and there continues to be high interest in applying for stalls at new SEHCs.

Nonetheless, we do not take all this for granted. We also recognise that some operators have have faced implementation challenges along the way, especially when they first started. This is also why we renew the management of SEHCs via open tender after the incumbent operators’ final tenancy term. It is a transparent process that allows incumbents that have done well to be considered favourably, while weeding out poorer-performing operators if necessary. Such a system enables healthy competition between the SEHC operators and motivates them to refine and improve their management models over time.

As we roll out the SEHC model to more new hawker centres, we will continue to monitor the implementation of the SEHC model closely and work with hawkers and operators to ensure that our new hawker centres continue to serve the interests of patrons well and ensure the well-being of our hawkers.

External circumstances such as inflation have presented challenges for our hawkers and Singaporeans alike, especially in recent years. We deeply understand these sentiments. For hawkers, increases in operating costs, especially for ingredients, can mean having to absorb some of these costs or making the difficult decision to raise prices for customers. For Singaporeans, having to pay 50 cents or a dollar more for hawker meals could feel like a dent in their wallets, as prices of other daily essentials also go up.

As Members have mentioned, the Government, with the support of our local community and private sector, are doing what we can to mitigate the impact of these rising costs.

The core of today's debate is how to ensure our hawker culture continues to thrive. The Government will spare no effort in supporting hawkers and the hawker trade. Consumers also play a crucial role. Many Singaporeans are concerned about the impact of global inflation on the cost of living. However, for hawkers to earn a decent income, they must consider the reality and set reasonable prices for their food. Hawkers need consumer support. We must establish a strong social compact to ensure that hawker culture can flourish.

Hawker centres are our community dining rooms, providing affordable food for Singaporeans. It is because of the efforts of generations of hawkers that Singapore's cuisine has become world-renowned. After Singapore's Independence in 1965, resources were invested to gradually relocate street vendors to hawker centres so that hawkers could operate their businesses safely, comfortably and hygienically in a conducive environment, while diners could eat happily with a peace of mind. With changing times, the Government has continuously explored different operating models, so that hawker centres can keep pace with the times, adjust to the changing business environment and safeguard hawkers' livelihoods while meeting consumers’ needs.

The Government appreciates hawkers' contributions and understands the various challenges they face, including rising cost pressures and changing consumer needs. The Government is committed to continue listening to feedback and to review and improve relevant policies with an open mind, with the aim to ensure hawkers' livelihoods and the long-term sustainability of the hawker trade and attract younger generations of Singaporeans to join this profession. Of these many goals, one is also to preserve our unique local hawker culture and ensure it is not replaced by franchises. We will also work closely with hawkers and value their feedback. Here, I want to pay tribute to our hardworking and resilient hawkers! Let us work together to support and protect our hawker culture, so that it can thrive for generations to come.