Justice Bao Gong: To Serve & To Protect: CHEAPEST FOOD AND DRINKS IN TOWN!

Commodity Prices have FALLEN DRASTICALLY, yet there are still hawkers who sell SKY HIGH PRICES, profiteering from the cheaper commodity prices but pocketing the differences in savings.

There are however, GOOD HEARTED hawkers who continue to sell food CHEAP and provide GOOD service.

Here are some examples of the Good Hearted vendors who sell Food and drinks at Pre-year 2000 PRICES:

CHEAPEST COFFEE STALL IN TOWN AREA:
MAXWELL HAWKER CENTRE

FIRST ROW STALL PARALLEL TO MAXWELL ROAD FACING THE ROAD

(From the toilet, walk towards URA Blg, about 6-7 stalls away)

(There are 2 coffee stalls, the first one nearer to toilet is slightly more expensive,

the SECOND coffee stall is the CHEAPEST COFFEE STALL in town!)

(When you're there, look for HELEN)


Here are their PRICES: Know of any cheaper prices in town? I doubt it.
Here are their Wonderful Prices:



SUPPORT CHEAP PRICES! SUPPORT THEM! LOOK FOR HELEN!

Clearing Trays at Hawker Centres

(Source: The New Paper)
There has been a recent debate over the 'clearing of trays' at hawker centres and this article has proven to be the last straw. In our previous post of Inflation: Excessive Rising Cost of Food, we have analysed and highlighted the discrepancy between lower cost of food and rising prices of hawker food and also pinpointed that someone along the food chain has been profiting unethically at the expense of the man in the street.

We would like to highlight that this article by KF Seetoh to be highly insensitive and adding on more financial pressure on the man in the street. He is suggesting that people who do not wish to clear their trays after eating should PAY A SURCHARGE, AMIDST RIDICULOUSLY HIGH FOOD PRICES ALREADY CHARGED BY THESE HAWKER CENTRES.

For someone who is earning good money and making a living going around eating good food and not having to worry about financial expenses to make such a suggestion is preposterous. What he is suggesting will only make the already rich monopolistic hawker centre owners even richer at the expense of the lower and middle class citizens, with their inflated food prices despite the plummeting cost of food in this worldwide recession. It is common knowledge that food prices remain stubbornly high despite the plunge in cost of food, and someone is unethically profiteering at the citizens' expense.

I hope that a well-known celebrity like him could reflect on his comments and think about the less fortunate and the less well off first, before publishing an article like that to add on the already magnified problem of food inflation, which is already a huge burden on the less well off. There are hordes of people who has to ration food among their family members because their salaries are not increasing with the ludicrous rise in food and hawker prices, and not everyone has the good fortune to enjoy the good life of tasting good food all around the world without worrying about the ridiculously high prices of hawker food.

After a few focus group sessions, many agreed that the BEST SOLUTION would be for the monopolistic hawker centre owners to REDUCE THEIR FOOD PRICES to a reasonable level, as they had increased during the commodities bull run previously, and you can rest assured, the citizens would be more than willing to help clear their trays. Nobody faults you, as a capitalistic business owner of these monopolies of hawker centres earning indecent amount of profits, but by making these profits at the expense of the poor, can you live with that? Even if you can, judgement day will come (Kiamat menjelang), and justice will prevail.

As a personal opinion, I feel the current route in financial markets is good, and I do hope it will prevail until public pressure would help bring down the prices down in Singapore as well as the rest of the world. However, in Singapore, where population remains high and continuing to increase, inflation and the existence of monopolies will always be a big problem for the masses. In a future post, we will analyse the cause and solutions of monopolies and profiteering parties and how it affects the man in the street in greater detail.

If you need help, or advice regarding a problem, do drop us a comment and we will endeavour to research and attempt to find a solution to the best we can. We are not wealthy, but we have the heart to make life better for the masses.

Your humble servant.

Inflation: Excessive Rising Cost of Food Amidst Lower Commodity Prices

Excessive rising prices are putting a heavy financial strain on the middle and lower class citizens. Transport prices rise, gasoline prices rise, newspaper charges rise (Noticed recently the price increase in your newspapers?), More and more Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantries are sprouting everywhere and traffic jams are becoming worse correspondingly and it seems people are paying more to get more jams. Even our neighbours from Malaysia who visits Singapore finds prices in Singapore exhorbitantly high (Check out a blog from our Malaysian counterpart who visited Singapore yesterday : http://www.lovechildrenright.com/2008/10/our-singapore-trip.html ).

However, it is the constant increase in FOOD PRICES that places the greatest strain on the man on the street.

The previous rally in commodities have have ended or at least, corrected and in view of the financial turmoil facing the world right now, world demand for oil is expected to drift much lower, led by America, which accounts for a quarter of the world’s oil consumption (Source: http://www.nationmaster.com).

Price of commodities have dropped, including rice. As at June 2008, The Straits Times article ‘Price of rice likely to fall in next few months’ quoted that the price of fragrant rice could tumble to US$1,000 (S$1,370) a tonne by year-end, importers forecast.

As at 2nd October 2008, the quote for commercial rice from Thailand is about USD$625 - $690 per metric tonne (which is approximately SGD$940 per tonne). That is a hefty drop in the price of rice. The prices of other food commodities are also falling in tandem, but prices of hawker food still remains high. A bowl of rice used to cost 20cents before the commodities rally, and every hawker took the opportunity during the commodity price rally to increase it to 50cents to a dollar per bowl. Now that commodity prices have fallen, why is it that their food prices still remain high?

An interesting highlight of how much food prices have escalated: With reference to Mr Brown’s article on rising prices: He has commented his roti prata has increased price by 10cents, and that was dated 3 July 2006. During 2006, the cost of a prata kosong was 50cents, fast forward 2 years now it costs from $1.00 to $1.30! and all these within 2 years! The cost of retail food has been increasing at a much higher rate than the price of commodities. So, somewhere along the food chain, the savings from the drop in commodity prices is not being passed down to the ultimate consumers. Someone along the food chain must have been making a tidy profit at the expense of the man on the street.

One would think it is the hawkers that are profiting from this because commodity prices have been dropping but he is still selling at the same high price. Others would think it is the landlord who is profiting from this, because the landlord raises the rent, which in turn forces the hawker to raise the price. Then another group of analysts says that the landlords are forced to increase the rent because they bought the property at high prices (We will talk about property prices and its effect on the ordinary man on the street on a later post). So, ultimately, the source of this rising food prices starts from property prices, which then results in higher rentals, which in turn results in higher food prices and the final consumer suffers the consequences. Of course, along the complicated chain, every party adds on a premium as profit and the cost snowballs to the final consumer by way of a $1.30 kosong roti prata or a 50cents small bowl of rice or 50 cents more for a few strands of extra noodles. Life is becoming more and more difficult for the middle and lower class Singaporean.

What we can do is to highlight the various eateries that charge reasonably cheap food and also those that charge high and yet cut down on the ingredients for the benefit of everyone.

We welcome suggestions and comments of eateries and we will post them for the benefit of all.
Your humble servant.

References:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption

http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_251740.html

http://www.riceonline.com/uploads/prices2.htm

http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/07/today_sporeans_.html