§2.5The Affordability Compact & Makan Vouchers

ASK OF GOVERNMENT · A PERMANENT ROUND OF CDC VOUCHERS, TAGGED FOR HAWKERS
ASK OF NEA · VALUE MEALS VOLUNTARY AT THE PILOT CENTRES
BUILDS ON · CDC VOUCHERS & HDB'S JAN 2026 REVISION

"Affordable hawker food" has quietly meant one thing for a decade: the hawker absorbs the difference. At social-enterprise centres today, stallholders report budget-meal margins measured in cents – or losses – alongside clauses, now under parliamentary scrutiny, that make them absorb app discounts and give away free meals. Government has already started the correction: NEA does not require budget meals at the centres it manages itself, and in January 2026 HDB removed the budget-meal requirement for coffee shops renewing their leases. One requirement remains: NEA asks every operator-run centre to keep food affordable as a tender condition, met by at least one value meal at each stall (MSE, 24 Sep 2025). Nor does the Government tie affordability to one price: asked by Victor Lye of the People's Action Party how affordable hawker food is defined, the Minister, Grace Fu, replied on 7 October 2026 that there is no single affordability threshold, and that what matters is access to a range of options (Official Report). The direction of travel is set; the Compact completes it, splitting the promise into its two honest halves:

Price freedom for the cook. Certified heritage stalls and new-entrant stalls under the band system set their own prices. No operator or agency may make a stall sell loss-making budget meals or absorb discounts as a condition of its tenancy, and that is an ask of NEA as well as of operators: at the pilot centres the value-meal condition becomes voluntary, with the State paying the gap. Where a cheap meal is public policy, it is voluntary and paid for: the State pays the difference between the cheap price and a published cost of making the meal. That cost sits in the public accounts, where policy costs belong, and can be found on the BudgetMealGoWhere portal that already exists.
Makan Vouchers for the eater. The system is not hypothetical: over 24,000 hawkers and heartland merchants already accept CDC vouchers on RedeemSG, and every household knows the teal decal. The system already splits by merchant type: each round is split into a half for hawkers and heartland merchants and a half for supermarkets, and the first digital round, in December 2021, could be spent only at hawkers and heartland merchants. What today's rounds are not is permanent, targeted, or hawker-specific – they are universal, decided budget-by-budget, and the hawker share is pooled with all heartland merchants; no round has yet been means-tested (paid only to those whose income and property fall below set limits). The Makan Vouchers need two changes to the system, asked of MCCY and the PA, which run it: a merchant tag for hawker and coffeeshop stalls, and a list of eligible households. With those, it fixes all three on infrastructure that already works: a standing, hawker-ring-fenced top-up for lower-income households, seniors and students, spendable at heartland coffeeshop stalls as well as hawker centres (mall food courts do not take CDC vouchers today). Rough size: $120 a year × about 550,000 households ≈ $66M a year (assumption: about 550,000 eligible households, a count the eligibility list will settle). That is smaller than a single round for every household, but it is aimed at those who need it, and it is permanent. It is deliberately kept out of this programme's own budget. Put another way, the Makan Vouchers are a hawker tag on voucher money the State already funds. More than $2.1bn of CDC and SG60 vouchers was spent at hawkers and heartland merchants over four years (MCCY, 3 Feb 2026), about $525M a year, and $66M a year is about 12% of that half (derived). Whether the tag is carved from future rounds or added on top of them is the Budget's choice; either way, the money already exists. Follow the Plate tests the fit: if one stall in five raises its prices 5%, a $120 voucher covers an eligible household's extra cost two to five times over, depending on how much of its eating-out is at hawker stalls; if every stall did, it would cover between about 40% and all of it. That is why price freedom stays tied to certified and new-entrant stalls (Follow the Plate, D.7).
The frame that wins the argument: affordability for those who need it, viability for those who cook. With the RTS Link about to put Johor Bahru's price points one train ride away, help aimed at the diner defends the eater and the cook at once – and arrives as visible cost-of-living relief with a heritage story attached, through a system that already runs.

Beside what already works, not in place of it. The Makan Vouchers are not the only meal help in the heartland, and they should not build a second system. Since March 2025 three CDCs have launched targeted meals of about $3 for lower-income households (Value Meals @ South West, Ready Meals @ North West and Warm Meals @ North East), all through vending machines and food lockers (the Record, A.1.2). We would ask that such credits also be spendable at participating hawker stalls, so that the same dollar feeds a household and keeps a cook. Where Food from the Heart's Project Belanja!, ComCare (the Government's cash help for people in need) meal vouchers from a CCC, or a constituency card such as MealsPlus already reaches a household through a stall, the vouchers work through that channel, not beside it. DBS's PayLah! cashback at hawker stalls is already a private subsidy to the diner, with about 2.7 million rewards expected in its 2026 run; the vouchers sit beside it. And the Compact must be funded, never written into a tenancy. The "Pay-It-Forward" free-meal clause at Bukit Canberra (August 2025) showed what contractual charity does to trust; on 24 September 2025 the Government told Parliament that the operator had never put the scheme into effect and had decided to remove the requirement from new agreements and renewals. Economists said it first, in 2018: help the diner who needs it directly, with "food stamps, vouchers or rebates" (Song Seng Wun) or "more financial assistance" (Walter Theseira), because "We shouldn't be asking hawkers to keep costs down" (Donald Low) (CNA/TODAY Big Read, 20 Oct 2018). Who should pay for the cheap plate has been asked in Parliament too: in 2024 Members proposed that the Government, not hawkers, fund targeted discounts, among them on CHAS cards, and that hawkers set their own prices (the Record, A.7). I agree with both. As an IPS (Institute of Policy Studies) researcher, Dr Teo Kay Key, asked in a commentary in The Straits Times in January 2026: "Budget meals are needed, but why should hawkers bear the burden?"

The question is not whether hawker food stays cheap. It is who pays for the cheapness – the state, openly, on behalf of those who need it; or the hawker, invisibly, on behalf of everyone.
§2.5 · The Affordability Compact & Makan Vouchers