With the cost of living skyrocketing in recent years, Malaysians are feeling the pinch in the wallets and it’s no different for our neighbours over in Singapore.
While both countries are feeling the effects of rising food costs, a Singaporean MP has recently made a bold claim that hawker meals at the city-island are still more affordable than Malaysia when based on median income.
S’pore MP: ‘Our hawker food is 2 times cheaper than KL’s’
In an Instagram reel shared by a page named @petir.sg, it showed MP Edward Chia giving a speech at Parliament last month regarding the prices of hawker food in Singapore.
According to him, a hawker meal is 0.1% of Singapore’s median monthly income, which was approximately SGD5,197 (about RM17,230) in 2023.
“A typical hawker meal costs SGD5 (about RM16.58). This means that a hawker meal represents roughly 0.1% of the median monthly income.
Now, consider Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, where the median monthly income is SGD1,901 (about RM6,302.88) and a street food meal costs about SGD2.90 (about RM9.62).
“Here, a meal accounts for around 0.26% of the median income, more than twice that of Singapore,” he explained.
Chia then went on to say that based on this comparison, Singaporeans are rather fortunate in terms of dealing with rising costs of living as other countries have to fork out more money.
He also commended hawkers in Singapore for serving out “high-quality, diverse, and delicious” meals at a price which was a fraction of what others pay at global cities.
“This affordability is Singapore’s unique social compact forged out of a vocation to feed the nation. But it also underscores the financial pressures hawkers face,” he said.
‘Not entirely accurate’
However, netizens didn’t seem to agree with Chia’s argument, with a majority saying that him comparing Singapore with Malaysia failed to present the full picture of the country’s economic state.
Meanwhile, a netizen joked that Chia was correct on all counts except for the one which he said Singapore’s hawker food was delicious.
Watch the clip here:
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