The first thing I noticed about Singapore when I came back slightly over a month ago, was the price hikes in everything – I had only been away for less than half a year, but everything has become more expensive.

Food prices are up as a result of rising costs of rice, cooking oil and energy costs. In fact, in the few months, rice prices had more than doubled! Suddenly, hawkers everywhere have either raised their prices, or cut down on portions, or worse, both.

In NUS canteens, I think there is an impending price hike – apparently some food stalls’ price boards have already been updated to reflect the new prices. Also, I cannot afford to have the occasional cappuccino from Spinelli’s or Olio Dome on campus anymore – prices have gone up about 50%!

I felt like going on a short trip with the SO to Thailand but realized that the amount of taxes and fuel surcharges today, excluding the air tickets’ cost, exceed the total price I paid for all-inclusive tickets 2 years ago. A couple of weeks ago I went on a short weekend trip to KL, and had to pay increased fuel surcharges (an increase to the tune of $11 for a $50 two-way coach ticket!) due to the removal of fuel subsidies in Malaysia. I also read that fuel surcharges for ferries to Batam and Bintan have also gone up by $10 in the past month – bringing the total price of a 2-way ferry ticket to Batam to $48 (Tickets cost just $20, surcharges, taxes and fees came up to $28!).

Every other day in the newspapers, I read about price hikes. The last few days I think it was about private transport operators and premium bus services fares going up from $3 to $4, a 33% hike. I think very soon, or at the first possible chance, public transport operators will propose fare hikes again.

From next week, electricity tariffs will go up, again. And petrol costs have skyrocketed too, of course… which is practically the cause of most other price increases.

The hardest hit people are middle and lower income earners. Many small little hikes add up to plenty of money. A Straits Times report earlier this week showed that the lowest wage earners had no wage increase in the past year, while the remaining people had an average increase of 5.9%. That is, if one believes in statistics. I personally take them with a pinch of salt – what, a cleaner earning on average $1,246 a month? Not very realistic, I think.

I have created a page to record all the price hikes I know of, and readers are welcome to contribute via the comments form. In my spare time, I will attempt to search for information on price hikes in Singapore from Jan 2008 onwards.

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