§7.7The Ask, Itemised – and What We Don't Ask
Everything this plan needs from Government is in the table below – most of it administrative, which an agency can decide, none of it needing a new law, and each item an announcement worth making in its own right. Every Budget cost is named: the first gift to the endowment and the matching pool (one-time); a small operating match (Years 1–3, and after if continued); the Makan Vouchers (yearly); a table-cleaning fee subsidy at the pilot centres, smaller wherever a re-tendered cleaning contract costs less; and the tax given up when donors deduct 250% of their gifts (a tax expenditure). Nothing in the plan binds NEA, a Town Council or an operator (§3.8), so every agreement it needs from them is listed here as an ask: to host a pilot centre, to run the bands and the ballot, to amend the HSS, to accept the relief notice and the named deputy, and to re-tender a cleaning contract. Four rows ask the agencies that share responsibility for hawker culture to own it together, and to count it: a permanent committee, joint owners for the next report to UNESCO, a hawker line in the next Heritage Plan, and the full spread of figures in place of medians. One row is marked optional: a retirement match for stallholders, costed now and left for a later decision (Hawkers and Social Protection, C.8.1).
| Decision | Instrument | Fiscal cost | What it buys – and the story it tells |
|---|---|---|---|
| Host the pilot centres – NEA agrees to each pilot centre, and so does the Town Council where it manages the centre, once the centre's own hawkers have voted it forward (§6.2) | NEA and Town Council administrative; the operator's agreement too wherever an operator runs the centre | Zero | A place to test the whole loop in public, at the centres where the heritage-worthy stalls are most likely to be found (§6.3). "You can eat the programme." |
| Rent bands & ballot pilot at the pilot centres | NEA administrative – completes the 2012 & Nov 2024 tender reforms; · the operator's agreement too wherever an operator runs a pilot centre, since its rents are fixed in its contract | The extra rent the highest bids might have raised, at three centres, five at most – small, capped | Fair, ungameable allocation; · ends record-bid headlines; · keeps the ballot proposed in Parliament in 2024, not its fixed or turnover rent, and answers each of the Government's four objections (the Record, A.7, §2.2). "BTO fairness comes to the hawker centre." |
| Extending the Hawkers Succession Scheme – to certified successors, with goodwill paid through escrow and NEA's three-year phasing of the rent written into its terms | NEA amends the terms of an existing scheme to allow a disclosed, capped goodwill payment for the craft and the name, never priced on the location, and to write in its own three-year phasing of the rent (§2.3) | Zero | Turns a well-built scheme – six completed transfers in nearly four years – into the standing succession pathway. "Your stall can outlive you." |
| Makan Vouchers – a permanent round of vouchers, for hawker food only, for lower-income households, seniors and students | A standing item in the existing CDC voucher system (more than 24,000 merchants signed up); MCCY and the PA add a merchant tag for hawker and coffeeshop stalls and a list of eligible households (§2.5) | About $66M a year, a rough figure that can be adjusted. · It equals about 12% of the half of CDC and SG60 voucher spending that goes to hawkers and heartland merchants (derived). | Cost-of-living relief for the households that need it, with a small, broad lift for every hawker: about $360 a stall a year in the model, from the new spending it brings (Follow the Plate, D.7). · It is not heritage stewardship, and the plan does not count it as such. · Smaller than one round for every household, but targeted and permanent; · no new system, no new card. |
| The Government's first gift to the endowment, and the matching pool | Budget / national campaign; MCCY's Cultural Matching Fund one source of the match, within its caps (the Budget Book, B.6.2) | $15M + $10M, one-time | A permanent institution for the price of one capital grant. · Public money starts it: during the campaign, about $1.08 of public money goes in for every private dollar (the Budget Book, B.9). · The match doubles each gift until the $10M pool is used. · Afterwards diners and partners carry it. |
| Operating match – a grant towards running costs, sized to match the gifts for spending (§7.6 funding stack) | Budget line, recurring | $300K, $400K, $500K in Years 1–3; $500K a year after, if continued | Small and recurring: it pays part of each year's running costs beside the endowment draw. · Government can stop it at any Budget; Follow the Plate tests the plan without it (the Budget Book, B.9). |
| Tax deduction on gifts – the existing 250% deduction for gifts to IPCs, once the Seed Bank has IPC status (the Budget Book, B.6.2) | No new decision: existing IRAS rule, extended to 2029 in Budget 2026 | Tax given up ≈$5.7M over the campaign (Years 0–2), with major donors at a 23% top rate ($5.6M at 22%, $5.9M at 24%); a tax expenditure | Not money the Seed Bank receives, but a real public cost, so it is counted here. · It is the largest after the first gift and the match (the Budget Book, B.9). |
| The relief notice – a pre-registered Corps cook becomes a joint operator for the days of a hawker's absence, up to 30 a year (more with a medical certificate), without the standing four-hour duty; · the days count as personal operation; · approved unless NEA objects within two working days | NEA's Joint Operator Scheme and nominee route, made faster (administrative) | Zero | Illness stops ending in a closed stall or a termination notice. "Sick leave comes to the hawker centre." |
| The named deputy – a short-cover joint operator: one registered assistant, named by the stallholder, may run the stall for up to an hour a day, logged like the relief notice, with no four-hour minimum, while the stallholder stays on the roll | A variant of NEA's Joint Operator Scheme (administrative) | Zero | An hour back each day, with the safeguards that keep it from becoming a sublet: one named person, capped hours, a log (§2.7). |
| Use the yearly at-risk count – the count (§3.6), national and per-centre totals that never name a stall, goes to one named recipient: the permanent committee below or, until it exists, NHB, the body that deals with UNESCO on Singapore's behalf, which shares it with NEA, MSE, MCCY and the Singapore Tourism Board; · each says how it will use it | Administrative; aggregates only, from signals hawkers give voluntarily and public facts | Zero | The count Singapore does not yet keep (§1.1). · NHB and MCCY can report it to UNESCO beside the Registry's list; NEA and MSE can point at-risk stalls to the Hawkers Succession Scheme; STB can send visitors to the stalls that most need the custom. "Singapore can name what it is losing, stall by stall." |
| A permanent committee for hawker culture – the 2018–20 UNESCO nomination committee (co-chaired by the CEOs of NEA and NHB and the President of FMAS, which is itself a standing federation) brought back as a permanent body; it meets twice a year and publishes one page a year: the at-risk count, HSS transfers, new entrants and exits, and what was done about the marketing risk UNESCO named | NEA, NHB and FMAS (administrative); MSE and MCCY agree its terms | Zero | Singapore's own table, restored rather than a critic's adopted: the body that won the inscription keeps what it won. · It gives the count one owner and four agencies one answer (§3.8). |
| Joint owners for the next report to UNESCO, due on 30 June 2027 – MCCY and MSE name an NHB director and an NEA director as co-leads for the hawker-culture section, signed off by both ministries and shared with FMAS before it goes; · and one shared Budget indicator for the element, such as hand-overs completed or dishes passed on each year | MCCY and MSE (administrative); a Budget indicator on either head | Zero | A once-in-six-years report becomes a reason to meet, and the promise to monitor "the communities of bearers and practitioners" gets a method and a starting count (§3.6). "Singapore can tell UNESCO in numbers what it now tells it in words." |
| A hawker line in the next Heritage Plan – Our SG Heritage Plan 2.0 runs to 2027 and NHB is drafting the next; · it carries the yearly at-risk count and a hawker strand in NHB's Heritage Apprenticeship | NHB and MCCY policy | Small: a strand in a pilot that exists | Neither costs the State much; · both put hawker culture into the plan NHB is measured by. · The Fellowship and the apprenticeship are ready partners (§4.2, §3.3). |
| The spread, not only the median – NEA publishes the spread of rents, fees and income by centre and stall type (the lowest quarter, the middle, the top quarter, the average and the poorest tenth), with the charges it does not publish today, such as dishwashing and point-of-sale fees | NEA administrative, from data it holds | Zero | A median rent can hold for a decade while the hawkers paying it change. · The spread shows who pays what, and settles the argument over fees with numbers (§2.2, §2.10). |
| A table-cleaning fee subsidy at the pilot centres – $200 a stall a month, following NEA's temporary support of September 2026 to February 2027, at the three pilot centres, five at most, tested by re-tendering each centre's cleaning contract for the work left since tray return became the rule in 2021; · the evaluator shows its effect before anyone prices it nationally | Budget line; · the contract's holder re-tenders it, convened by NEA: the hawkers' association at a Town Council centre, with the Town Council's agreement; · with the operator's agreement at an operator-run centre | Up to ≈$0.98M/yr at the three pilot centres, 408 stalls ($200 a stall a month), ≈$1.63M/yr at five; · less wherever a re-tendered contract costs less. · Nationally, a later decision: up to ≈$16.6M/yr | $2,400 a year back to each stallholder at a pilot centre, and a public test of what the cleaning left after tray return really costs. · The Minister did not expect cleaning costs to fall (6 Jul 2021); · the re-tender shows whether they can (§2.2). |
| Paying for budget meals where a cheap meal is kept as policy | NEA administrative – the value-meal tender condition at operator-run centres becomes voluntary at the pilot centres, with the gap paid, as HDB did for coffeeshops in Jan 2026 | Small; the gap on each meal | Finishes a correction Government has already begun, and moves the policy's cost into the public accounts, where it belongs. |
| No compulsory designated suppliers at operator-run centres – stallholders buy gas and crockery where they choose, or under a centre-wide contract re-tendered in the open | NEA's guidelines for operator-run centres (administrative) | Zero | Closes the one captive market where a middleman can charge what he likes, with the contract's price on the Plate Ledger (§2.12). |
| Score stallholder protection in HDB coffeeshop tenders – operators bid commitments to fund their stallholders' MediSave or retirement match | HDB tender policy (quality criteria) | Tender rent given up: up to ≈$1.7M/yr at half take-up of HDB-rented coffeeshop stalls; · less if quality scoring lets operators absorb part of it | Carries the Protection Floor to coffeeshop hawkers through the lease HDB already grants, with no private rent touched. · Operators who promise to fund their stallholders' retirement will bid lower rents, so HDB gives up some tender rent. · Counted and published, that rent given up is HDB's annual contribution to hawker heritage. |
| OPTIONAL · Stallholder retirement match – Government matches stallholders' own CPF top-ups, up to $1,200 a year, under 55; · from 55, hawkers are helped to claim the existing Matched Retirement Savings Scheme, if they pass its income and home tests (§2.11.1 and §2.11.2); · decision left for later (Hawkers and Social Protection, C.8.1) | Budget line, administered by CPF Board and MOM | Base up to ≈$4.1M/yr (every public-centre stallholder under 55 taking it up); · stretch ≈$7.9M/yr (all stallholders under 55 at 70% take-up, with shared hospital-cash cover); · less what giving, Heritage Plate licences and HDB's contribution cover | Parity with the platform worker: someone shares the cost of the cook's retirement, as a platform now does for riders born in or after 1995 and for older riders who opt in. "The young rider got a CPF share. · Now so does the cook." |
Who the money reaches. Read by who receives it, the plan has two tiers, and each is paid for differently. Of the $19,683,808 the plan spends over Years 0–3, 57% ($11.25M, net of the programme's own revenue) goes to items that only the 44 heritage-worthy stalls receive, most of it as apprentices' wages and Fellowships; 15% ($3.00M) reaches every one of the 408 stalls at the pilot centres, as relief cooks, critical-illness cover and the listening; and the other 28% ($5.43M) runs the institution. About 83% of it is gift money. The State's items over the same four years come to about $234M, including one round of Makan Vouchers, and 85% of that is vouchers diners can spend at any stall (all derived from the ledgers and the ask above; the voucher round is assumed to start in Year 1). So gifts buy the craft, and public money lifts every stall a little. For scale, the whole four-year ledger is about 1.5 times the six months of rent support NEA is paying now, about $13M (derived), and less than half of the more than $50M in rent waivers and cleaning subsidies the State gave more than 13,000 hawkers in 2020 (MSE, Committee of Supply, 4 Mar 2021).