The National Environment Agency (NEA) manages all 120 hawker centres in Singapore, comprising more than 14,000 stalls.
Dr Koh said that based on NEA’s survey, on average, rental forms less than 10 per cent of the operating costs for stallholders, compared to raw materials and manpower which accounted for 56 per cent and 20 per cent of operating costs respectively in 2022.
There are measures to moderate hawker stall rents, Dr Koh said, and these include not setting a reserve rent for tenders and disallowing subletting.
Tendered rents are adjusted to the market rate determined by an independent professional valuation after the first three years of the tenancy period, he noted.
“As a result of the various measures, the median monthly rent of a non-subsidised cooked food stall across our hawker centres is about S$1,250, and it has remained at this level since 2015,” said Dr Koh.
He noted that the stall that attracted the record bid in Marine Parade Central Market and Food Centre had more than 40 bids, which was “quite competitive”.
“Overall, this is a very popular centre as it is open for three meals throughout the day and has good footfall, especially given the recent opening of a new MRT station and additional developments that are near this centre,” said Dr Koh, referring to the opening of Marine Parade MRT station just beside the hawker centre on Jun 23.
While hawkers there saw an increase in footfall, a few said the spike was temporary.
In a follow-up question, Mr Yip asked how the authorities assessed the impact of increasing hawker stall rentals on small business owners and aspiring hawkers, and what kind of support will be given to them.
Dr Koh reiterated how subletting or assigning stalls was not permitted, in order to prevent stallholders from engaging in “rent-seeking behaviour”, in that they pass on the high rent to the person subletting the stall. He added that reserve rent was removed in the tender of vacant stalls since March 2012 to allow stall rentals to “reflect fully the market conditions based on what people tendered”.
“Only about 4 per cent of cooked food stores in hawker centres today are paying rent at above the assessed market rent. For the remaining over 6,000 stallholders, they are paying rent no higher than the assessed market rent,” said Dr Koh.
He added that for new hawker centres under the socially-conscious enterprise hawker centre management model, NEA will take into consideration tender proposes “holistically”, including the total cost that hawkers will bear, before tenders are awarded to the operator.
“Thereafter, the successful tenderer is required to maintain the same rates for charges collected from stallholders throughout the tenancy term. So there’s more cost certainty to many of the store operators.”
From: channelnewsasia
Business News
