WP MP Jamus Lim: Give Singapore’s hawkers the opportunity to compete today, so that they can be present in the future

SINGAPORE: When Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim (Sengkang) appeared on a radio show recently, he tackled an issue that he raised in Parliament: Singapore’s homegrown food and beverage operators, and what can be done to support them further amid the challenges they face, such as the manpower crunch and high rental rates.

In the Nov 5 episode of Money FM 89.3’s Let’s Talk, Singapore with Neil Humphreys and Audrey Siek, the conversation focused on how there are more foreign food chains, such as Luckin Coffee or Chagee, in Singapore’s neighbourhood malls, and Assoc Prof Lim has been concerned that this is coming at the expense of local eateries.

While he acknowledged the importance of competition and that Singaporeans’ palates have become more global, he argued that if, having declared hawker culture as part of the city-state’s intangible legacy, more can be done to give local businesses a better chance to compete with F&B chains that have stronger financial backing. 

“The question I wanted to get people to think about is what it means when we start to lose some of our local players…and what it means when increasingly what we have are chain stalls and chain options, rather than the possibility of going to a small mom-and-pop bakery or a small mom-and-pop restaurant, serving recipes that their grandmother or great-grandmother have been doing for a long time,” said Assoc Prof Lim, adding, “I think we all inherently have a deep-seated yearning for this type of food. And I think there will be a loss to the local F&B landscape if we let that go”

He added that what he is trying to do is to see that the economic element of choosing which eateries end up in a mall be “rebalanced” through additional support and even some policy changes.

Assoc Prof Lim is therefore calling for regulated rent increases, as well as a more balanced mix of tenants in malls. This, he argued, would protect local eateries from being priced out.

When Mr Humphries asked the MP what he hoped to find in a heartland mall five or ten years in the future, Assoc Prof Lim said he wanted to stumble upon a local business serving their grandmother or great-grandmother's recipes.

Alternatively, it could also be a business that found its own niche, similar to how Hainanese chicken rice adapted to the Singaporean palate, and in his view, tasted better.

“We want that ability to be able to say we have our local champions that have adapted tastes and cuisines and styles from the rest of the world, but we need to give them the opportunity to be able to compete today, so that they can be present in the future. And that's the thrust of what I've been pushing for,” he said. /TISG

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