NTUC FairPrice, Dairy Farm Group to extend price freeze on housebranded rice

SINGAPORE: Several supermarkets in Singapore will extend the price freeze of its housebranded rice till 31 December 2012.

NTUC FairPrice said it would continue to freeze prices on all nine types of FairPrice housebranded rice from Thailand and Vietnam until the end of the year.

Prices for the FairPrice housebranded rice have been frozen since November 2011.

FairPrice noted that though the Consumer Price Index (CPI) eased to 5 per cent in May 2012 compared to 5.4 per cent the previous month, non—cooked food and prepared meals prices rose by 0.2 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively.

Tng Ah Yam, Managing Director for Group Purchasing, Merchandising and International Trading for NTUC FairPrice, said: "As rice is a daily staple for most of our customers, we have decided to keep rice prices stable so as to help our customers stretch their dollar as we have done so through the years.

"It is our social mission to help moderate the cost of living here and we hope this will bring some relief to both our members and our customers."

FairPrice said as one of the major rice importers in Singapore, it stockpiles more than three months’ supply of rice to ensure reliability of supply and stability of price.

Prices of rice are kept stable due to the policy of stockpiling, diversified sourcing, forward buying, direct importing, bulk buying and contract prices with manufacturers.

Elsewhere, the Dairy Farm Singapore Group said its supermarkets Cold Storage, Giant and Shop N Save will be extending the price freeze of all their housebranded rice, cooking oil, flour and sugar until December 31.

It said the price freeze extension on the four housebranded items was aimed at helping consumers cope with the rising cost of living.

Dairy Farm first implemented the price freeze in February 2011.

— CNA/ck